


Honest with your heart

by aretia



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aliens, Angst with a Happy Ending, Aromantic, Asexual Shiro (Voltron), Dads of Marmora (Voltron), Dancing, Demiromantic bisexual Keith, Drowning Mention, Earth AU, Frayromantic bisexual Lance, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Non-fatal hanahaki disease, Rated T for PG-13 levels of swearing, Suicidal Ideation Mention, Thace and Ulaz are Keith's adoptive parents, Weddings, alcohol mention, occasional sexual innuendos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:01:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22858195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aretia/pseuds/aretia
Summary: Three weeks before Lance and Keith’s wedding, Lance is busy planning the perfect celebration for marrying the love of his life, until he begins to suffer from the early stages of hanahaki disease. No one, not his best friend Allura or even Dr. Ulaz, can figure out why, as hanahaki is usually caused by unrequited love, and Keith clearly loves him back. Lance’s case of hanahaki may have a deeper cause than what it appears to be on the surface. Doubt and denial worsen with the disease as Lance faces the realization that, even though romance and marriage are at the center of his vision for a happy life, his relationship with Keith might not be making him happy.
Relationships: Acxa/Keith (Voltron), Curtis/Shiro (Voltron), Keith/Lance (Voltron), Thace/Ulaz (Voltron)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 27
Collections: VLD Hanahaki Bang





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my contribution to the VLD Hanahaki Bang! So many emotions went into the creation of this work, and I am so excited to share it with the world. 
> 
> Art for the bang made by the amazingly talented [inkbadger!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkbadger/)
> 
> Beta read by my awesome friend [burrsir!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/burrsir/)
> 
> The title is a lyric title, from [Speak to Me](https://youtu.be/gotdkitGg0k) by I the Mighty.

“What do you think of this one?” Lance asked, picking up one of the sample bouquets in the display case.

“Red roses and baby’s breath? Doesn’t that seem a little  _ basic _ for you?” Allura said.

“I guess so,” said Lance, placing the bouquet back on the stand.

“You need something that’ll make a statement,” Allura continued, walking around to another display. “Like this!” She stepped around the corner, holding the most garish bouquet Lance had ever seen. It was made up of roses that were once white, whose stems had been divided into strips and placed in colored water so that the petals were dyed in vibrant, swirly rainbows.

Lance snorted out a laugh, and covered his mouth to muffle it. They were lucky that the florist’s shop was empty. Even the owner seemed to be out, so no one was there to witness their antics, but he still didn’t want to startle any potential customers. “If you really want something that screams ‘gay wedding’, that’s the one, for sure,” said Lance. “But somehow I don’t think Keith would go for that.”

“You want something Keith would like? Then how about this?” She reached into the case with her other hand and pulled out another bouquet, this time with velvety black roses. She held it up to her face with a mock serious expression, and did her best impression of Pidge’s favorite routine for making fun of Keith: “ _ I’m Keith. I’m so emo _ .”

Lance chuckled. “That looks like Keith’s wardrobe in bouquet form. He would  _ love  _ that,” he said. “But it doesn’t go with our beige and blue color scheme for a beach wedding.”

“You’re no fun today,” Allura pouted, dramatically shrugging her shoulders with both the black and rainbow bouquets still dangling from her hands, before she placed them back in the case. “Where is your energy? I thought you would be excited to pick out flowers for your wedding.”

“I am,” Lance sighed. He crossed his arms in a defensive posture, caught off guard by Allura noticing his downbeat attitude so easily. “I’ve just been exhausted lately.”

Allura stepped over to him and placed her hand on his shoulder. “I know wedding planning is stressful, and all the minutiae aren’t nearly as fun as they look. That’s why I’m here to help!” 

Allura was a wedding planner, but since she was also Lance’s best friend, she had offered her services to him for free. Lance had of course refused, and paid her regular price for helping with the wedding preparations. Her help had been much needed, but Lance still made most of the decisions on his own. 

“You’ve been trying to do it all by yourself, and I can see that it’s wearing on you. It’s okay to ask for help once in a while,” Allura reassured him.

“It’s not even that,” Lance said. He curled around himself more, shrugging off Allura’s hand. “The workload doesn’t bother me. It gives me something to do, you know? I just feel nervous about the wedding, about being married. I’m getting sick from the stress, and at this rate I’ll be coughing up blood on my wedding day.”

“Lance, the hopeless romantic? Getting cold feet? I never thought I’d see the day,” Allura giggled. “But seriously, Lance. You’ve wanted this forever. Remember when you texted me about  _ our _ dream wedding, and then I blocked your number?” Allura let out a hysterical laugh, while Lance covered his face in embarrassment.

“You don’t need to remind me,” Lance groaned. His ill-advised crush on Allura when they were in college was a period in his life that he would rather forget. He had made so many obnoxious moves on her, and she had rejected him so many times, that he thought he had lost his chance at being friends with her. But as soon as she started to let down her walls for him, he lost interest in dating her, and all he wanted was for their friendship to remain the same. He hated to admit it, but maybe the thrill of the chase was all he really wanted. When Keith finally managed to tame the notorious playboy Lance, none was more surprised than Allura, other than Lance himself. At least he had managed to salvage his friendship with Allura, despite his relentless pursuit of her in the past. She seemed to think it was hilarious now.

“Sorry,” she said. “My point is, you’ve wanted this since even before you and Keith were an item. This is your dream. Now’s your chance to live it. So chin up, let’s pick out some flowers.” She grabbed a bouquet of dark red roses, and shoved it in Lance’s face.

Lance inhaled a deep whiff of the roses’ scent, and it sent him into a coughing fit. He doubled over, trying to catch his breath, but every exhale clawed at his throat. When he finally reached a respite in the coughing and opened his eyes, he saw a splatter of red on the floor.

“What was that you said about coughing up blood?” Allura murmured, her hand covering her mouth in shock. “We have to get you to a doctor.”

Lance dropped to his knees with another spasm of coughs. He rubbed his hand over the floor to try to wipe up some of the blood, but what collected in his palm was not blood. He scooped up a handful of flower petals with ragged edges, shot through with red streaks like blood splatters.

“It’s not blood. It’s flower petals,” Lance said, his voice raspy.

“Are you sure those came from you? There’s flower petals all over the floor. This is a flower shop,” Allura said, gesturing around her at the linoleum littered with petals.

“Yeah. I’m sure,” Lance said. He let out another small cough, holding his mouth closed this time, and felt the smooth petal slip onto his tongue. He opened his mouth, and pinched it with his fingers, holding it up to show Allura. “What does this mean?” he said, in a small, panicked voice.

“I don’t know. But I might know someone who does,” Allura said.

~

“Hey, Allura, the hospital is that way,” Lance said as Allura sped through an intersection.

“They won’t be able to help you there,” said Allura. “I know a place that will.”

“You know, normally, I admire your adventurous spirit. But now is really not the time,” Lance said, his words punctuated by a cough that sent a few more flower petals spiraling into his lap.

“Trust me,” said Allura. She pulled into the parking lot of a building with a sign that read ‘ _ Marmora Minute Clinic. _ ’

“What the heck?” Lance said out loud.

“You’ll see,” said Allura.

She parked in front of the building, and came around to the passenger side to help Lance out. She held his arm as he stumbled out of the van, sending a pile of flower petals tumbling out of his lap onto the pavement.

“Save some of those, we might need to show them to the doctor,” said Allura, bending down to pick up a petal.

“No. Gross,” said Lance, tugging her towards the door. “There’s plenty more where that came from. Let’s just get this over with.”

They walked through the doors, ringing the bell above the door frame and startling the young man who was playing a handheld game behind his desk. The lower half of his face was covered by a black surgical mask. “Hi there, how can I help you?—Oh, hi, Allura!” he stammered.

“Hi, Regris,” she said. “Is the doctor in today?”

“You know it. Seven days a week. Sometimes I swear he lives here,” Regris replied. “What can we help you with?”

“It’s… well… I’ve never seen anything like it, but I have a feeling that maybe you can help us.” She looked at Lance expectantly.

“I can’t do it on command!” said Lance.

“That’s why we should have kept some from the parking lot,” she whispered.

“Oh, come on,” said Lance, but just then, he was wracked by another coughing fit, and sputtered a flurry of flower petals onto the carpet.

Regris’s eyes widened. “Got it. Follow me,” he said. He stepped out from behind his desk and opened the door to the hallway leading to the exam rooms in the back, waving Lance over. Allura tried to follow him, but Regris held up his hand. “Allura, I’m sorry, but you know the drill. I need you to wait out here. Privacy and all that.”

“I understand,” Allura said. She sat down on a couch in the waiting room, and picked up a gossip magazine that looked at least a few years outdated.

Lance looked over his shoulder at her as the door shut behind him and Regris. He was honestly glad that Regris had stopped her from coming in with him. He knew she didn’t mean to, but she could be so overprotective of him that her presence felt stifling sometimes. 

“Just wait right here,” Regris said, directing Lance to sit in the exam chair. “The doctor will be right with you.” Then, he was out the door, and Lance was alone in the room.

Allura clearly thought highly of this doctor, since she had brought him here directly instead of taking him to a normal hospital, and she seemed to know the staff well. So it was odd that she hadn’t mentioned the doctor’s  _ name _ . Lance wondered if she had just forgotten to mention it, but she was so deliberate that he suspected that she had a reason, he just didn’t know what it was. 

That is, until the doctor opened the door. 

Standing before him was none other than Ulaz, Lance’s soon-to-be father-in-law. Ulaz, and his husband Thace, who owned the flower shop downtown, had adopted Keith when he was eight years old. Keith’s fathers, along with his birth mother, had been part of the first wave of alien immigration to Earth, and were of a species known as Galra; Keith was half-Galra himself, although he looked human for the most part. Regris was likely a Galra of a later generation, possibly mixed with another alien species, since most of the Galra that Lance had seen in Keith’s extended family didn’t have tails. Lance had known that Ulaz was a doctor, but he didn’t expect him to be working at a walk-in clinic in the middle of a strip mall, least of all one that had such a mysterious aura to it.

Ulaz was equally surprised to see Lance. “I didn’t expect to see you again until the wedding shower! This is quite a surprise,” Ulaz commented.

“Nice to see you too, Doctor Ulaz,” Lance replied weakly.

“I’m sorry it isn’t under better circumstances,” said Ulaz. “What seems to be the problem today?”

“Allura brought me here because while we were shopping for flowers for the wedding, I started coughing up flower petals,” Lance said. He coughed again, less violently than before, and a single petal fluttered from his lips into his lap.

Ulaz grabbed a pair of forceps from the tray beside him, and used them to pick up the petal. He stared at it for a moment before dropping it into a petri dish filled with liquid.“That looks like… no, that can’t be right,” Ulaz mused to himself. “We need to run some more tests.”

He led Lance down another hallway, and had him take off his shirt and lie down on a table to take an X-ray. The X-ray technician was another tall and broad Galra with a tail and a mask, and he spoke to Ulaz in low whispers, which Lance didn’t find very reassuring. The sign outside said that this clinic specialized in semi-magical ailments, and Lance wondered what it was about his condition that put it on the paranormal side of things.

After the X-ray was done, Ulaz took Lance back to the exam room. “Allura made the right choice bringing you here. A regular clinic would have no idea what to do with you,” Ulaz muttered.

He pulled up the image he had taken of Lance’s chest on his computer screen, and pointed to a grayish cluster at the bottom of his lungs. “What does that look like to you?” he asked.

Lance peered at the screen, and could barely make out the outlines of leaves and petals in the blurry image. “Um… plants?” Lance said, raising an eyebrow in confusion.

“Exactly,” said Ulaz. “You have an early stage of hanahaki disease. It’s rather rare, and very little is known about it. The disease causes flowers to grow in your lungs, with symptoms including coughing fits, difficulty breathing, and the characteristic coughing up petals.”

“A rare disease? Did I catch it from someone?” Lance asked.

Ulaz shook his head. “It’s not contagious,” he said. “Hanahaki disease develops as a result of unrequited love.”

“Unrequited love? That’s not possible,” Lance stammered. He was already engaged to Keith, so if he was in unrequited love with someone, that would cause quite an upheaval. If his plans for the wedding crumbled, so too would his relationship with Keith, and his good reputation in the eyes of Keith’s family. “I’m sorry, Ulaz…”

“You do not need to apologize to me for contracting a disease,” Ulaz said. “As a doctor, I am only concerned with helping you recover. But… as your fiancé’s father, I am curious. Have you fallen in love with someone else?”

“No, there’s no one else,” Lance insisted, although the person he had been with when the hanahaki attack happened was  _ Allura _ .

“You can be honest with me. I won’t tell Keith. That would be a violation of your privacy,” said Ulaz. “The color of the flowers in hanahaki disease symbolizes the person they represent. Do you associate the color red with Keith?”

“Yes,” said Lance. Red was Keith’s favorite color, and it suited his hotheaded demeanor. If the flowers represented Allura, then according to what Ulaz said, they would be her favorite color, pink. Lance felt his muscles relax with a small wave of relief. He knew that Allura thought of him as just a friend, and so did he. He had gotten over his crush on her years ago. That couldn’t be it.

“Then the only other explanation must be that you feel like your love for Keith is unrequited,” said Ulaz.

That sounded even more absurd. Lance knew that Keith loved him! They were about to get married in three weeks! “But I don’t think that. Keith loves me,” Lance said.

“I know as well as you do that that’s true. But hanahaki disease doesn’t care about reality,” said Ulaz. “Hanahaki disease only arises from the perception of unrequited love. In most cases, the afflicted person’s feelings are very much reciprocated, and once they confess to the object of their affection, the hanahaki disease goes away. Maybe you have some unexamined insecurities in your relationship with Keith that caused this disease to flare up.”

Ulaz might have been onto something with that. He had spent much of the first few months of their relationship feeling like Keith was out of his league and he didn’t deserve him. He thought that Keith was just dating him out of pity, and couldn’t believe that Keith’s affections were actually real, despite Keith proving time and time again that they were. Maybe those feelings had reared their ugly head again in light of the impending wedding, and Lance hadn’t realized it until now. It was easier to accept that than any other explanation, like that he was in love with someone else, or that Keith really didn’t love him.

“Okay. What if you’re right? How do I get it out?” asked Lance. “Is there a pill I can take? Can you do surgery on it? I’ll do anything. I need to get better before the wedding.”

“Unfortunately, there is no medical intervention that is known to cure hanahaki disease,” said Ulaz. “The only treatment for hanahaki disease is its natural cure.”

“And what is that?” asked Lance. 

“Hanahaki disease is, at its core, an expression of repressed feelings. Luckily, yours is still in its early stages, so all you need to do is be honest with yourself. Once you confess your feelings to the object of your love, regardless of how he feels, your hanahaki disease should disappear,” Ulaz explained.

Lance sighed with relief. “That sounds easy enough,” he said. “Thank you, Dr. Ulaz.”

“No problem. Just doing my job,” said Ulaz. “By the way, for the wedding shower, I know you wanted a mixer, but what color would you prefer? Chrome or cherry red?”

~

When Lance opened the door to the waiting room, Allura tossed the magazine aside and jumped out of her seat. “How did it go? Did Dr. Ulaz help you out?”

“Yes,” Lance replied.

“Oh, I knew he would. He helped me when I started getting psychic headaches as a result of my empath abilities, and no one else could figure out what it was. Did he tell you what you had?” she pried.

Suddenly, Lance felt insecure about sharing such a thing, even with his best friend. Ulaz was bound by regulations not to share what they had discussed, but Allura was under no such restriction, and she was an incorrigible gossip. If he told her, the news could get back to Keith before he told him himself, and that could interfere with Ulaz’s one-step treatment plan.

“He said it was nothing,” Lance lied. “He said that I might have inhaled some flower petals while I was sniffing flowers at the shop earlier. They’re all out of my system now, so I should be fine.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Allura said. “How could you inhale so many flower petals without noticing?”

Lance shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s the doctor,” Lance said simply.

Allura furrowed her eyebrows in disbelief. “All right,” she said. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

They got into Allura’s van, and Lance pulled out his phone to find three missed calls from Keith, and a series of increasingly frantic texts asking him where he was. Lance sighed; Keith could be more than a little overbearing. He texted him a quick  _ Be home soon, _ then put his phone away and pressed his fingers to his temple.

When Lance opened the door to his apartment, he was greeted by Keith barreling into him, nearly knocking him to the floor. Keith wrapped his arms around Lance in a hug so tight that it nearly squeezed the breath out of him. “Where have you been?” Keith asked, his voice muffled by Lance’s shirt, with his face buried against Lance’s shoulder. “I was so worried about you.”

“The flower shopping just took a couple of hours longer than I expected. I didn’t think you would be this upset about it,” Lance said.

“But you weren’t answering your phone,” Keith said. 

Guilt sank its claws into Lance’s mind. “I’m really sorry. It’s just that… my phone died, and I didn’t have a chance to charge it until I got back in Allura’s car.”

“It’s okay. Sorry, I didn’t mean to have an outburst like that. I’m not mad at you,” Keith said. “It’s just that you said you’ve been feeling sick lately. I was afraid something had happened.”

Lance tugged on his collar, feeling beads of sweat trickle down his neck. Keith was too observant for Lance’s comfort sometimes. Usually, he liked how in tune Keith was with his emotions, but this time, he verged a little too close to the truth. “I’m fine, really,” he insisted, anxious to change the subject. 

Keith folded his arms and looked away from Lance. “I wasn’t just worried because you were sick. You’ve been distant lately. Is something wrong? I want you to feel comfortable enough to tell me.”

Lance’s guilt was eating him alive. He appreciated Keith’s doting concern for him, but he  _ couldn’t _ tell Keith what was really going on, not without making everything worse. Keith would jump to conclusions that he was in love with someone else just like Ulaz had. Lance only hoped that Ulaz’s cure would work.

“I’ve just been tired and busy from all the work getting ready for the wedding. It’s nothing you have to worry about, really,” said Lance.

“Do you want me to take on some of the work for you?” Keith offered. “You’ve hardly asked for my input on anything, and that’s fine because I don’t really know what I would do, but I can try to help, if that’s what you need.”

“No, it’s okay. I’ve got this. Really,” Lance said.

“Are you sure? Because you’ve been so busy that I’ve barely spent any time with you for the past few weeks, and we live together,” Keith said. “We’re about to be married in three weeks. I want to be able to see my husband for more than a few minutes each day.”

Lance felt cornered. He had to admit that on some subconscious level, he was using the hectic nature of wedding planning as an excuse to avoid Keith. He had been feeling uneasy around him lately, but just like Allura had said, it was probably just typical wedding nerves, and it would all go away once the wedding was over.

“You’re invited to some of the wedding planning things,” Lance said defensively. He wasn’t expecting to get into an argument right out of the gate, with how affectionately Keith had greeted him. “We’re still going to ballroom dance class tomorrow. Right?”

“That’s not what I mean,” said Keith, heat rising in his voice and in his cheeks. “When we’re together, we’re always going out and doing stuff. It’s been weeks since we’ve just… I don’t know, cuddled in bed or watched a movie together.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t been spending enough quality time with you,” Lance sighed. Although if he was being honest with himself, quiet time with Keith made him antsy. Dread settled over him at the thought of the wedding chaos screeching to a halt at the end of the ceremony, and leaving him adrift with a void of empty time to fill. He didn’t know when spending time with Keith started to feel like a chore, but he hated himself every time those feelings prickled at the back of his consciousness.

The hanahaki disease was like a bolt out of the blue, an answer to all his questions. If deep down he was feeling insecure about whether Keith really wanted him again, then maybe there was an explanation for his feelings of trepidation.

“Keith, there’s something I have to tell you,” Lance said. He saw how Keith’s posture tensed at that, and amended, “It’s nothing bad, don’t worry. I just think I’ve been nervous about the wedding and avoiding you because I feel like I don’t really deserve you.” Lance sighed, trying to remember how this discussion had gone a few years ago. “I mean, look at you. You ride a motorcycle, you know martial arts, you’re the definition of cool. And I’m just a loser who can’t drive and lives in a rinky-dink apartment. I don’t know what you see in me.”

“That’s what’s bothering you?” Keith asked, a little incredulously. “What does how ‘cool’ I am have to do with anything? I thought that we had gotten through this phase a long time ago, Lance. Doesn’t three years of our relationship give you enough proof that I’m into you for real?” He raised one eyebrow in confusion.

“I know… It’s just that…” Lance looked down at his hands. “Do you love me, Keith?” Lance asked, his voice small.

Keith took Lance’s hands in his. “Of course I do, Lance. I love you more than anything in the world. Tell me, what brought this on? Did something happen?”

“I’m just feeling insecure, is all. Nothing too out of the ordinary for me,” Lance said.

“Lance,” Keith said. He held out his arms for Lance again, and Lance obediently let Keith embrace him. “Please don’t ever doubt yourself or what I feel for you. You’re my everything.” His hand stroked the back of Lance’s head. Then, his fingers moved underneath Lance’s jaw, and tilted his face up so that Keith could press a kiss to his lips.

Lance’s kiss was chaste, a closed-lip peck, and he pulled away quickly, even though Keith’s arms held him close like he wanted more. “Thanks. I feel better now. Let’s just go to bed,” said Lance.

He wondered why he didn’t feel the immediate relief that Ulaz had promised. He still felt the flowers unfurling in his chest, their petals tickling against the insides of his lungs. Maybe it would take a while for the cure to take its effect, and sleep was always a good remedy for any ailments, especially ones caused by overactive thoughts.

Their bedtime routine was a comfort to Lance; it had been the same ever since they had started living together, and it could take Lance back to a simpler time, when he could pretend that everything was okay. Keith switched off the lights and snuggled into bed behind Lance, his arms wrapping around his waist and holding Lance close to his chest. He didn’t pull the blankets over them, as their shared body heat kept them warm enough in the late spring heat.

“Goodnight,” Keith whispered against the nape of Lance’s neck. He pressed a kiss to Lance’s skin. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Lance replied. In a few minutes, he felt the steady rhythm of Keith’s breath against his back. The embrace of sleep didn’t come for Lance nearly as quickly. He lay there while Keith used him as a body pillow, until his eyelids started to droop with the weight of the day’s exhausting ordeal.

Suddenly, he felt a tightness in his chest, like Keith’s arms around his waist were smothering him. He couldn’t feel the scratch of petals in his throat that signaled the impending coughing fit, but he knew it would come soon if he ignored the discomfort he was feeling.

“Uh, Keith?” Lance said, loud enough to wake him.

Keith responded with a grunt. “Mhm?”

“Maybe I should sleep over here on this side,” said Lance. “I’m feeling sick, so I’d rather not wake you up if I have to go, you know, puke my guts out.”

Keith relented and released Lance from his embrace, then turned over and lay down on his side, facing away from Lance. Lance settled into his side of the bed, adjusting to the space around him.

Lance’s thoughts had been occupied by the wedding all day, but that was the first time that he had really thought about the fact that he was about to be married. They were sleeping like married people. As Lance knew it, people who had been long married had their own sides of the bed and slept as far away from each other as the size of the bed would allow, not cuddled up next to each other. Newlyweds spooned, but Lance was getting an early start on the distance he associated with marriage. 

With his back facing Keith’s, Lance found himself much more comfortable. The cool breeze wafted over his skin, and the aftermath of the disease weighed his body down with exhaustion, until he fell asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Lance woke up, and took a deep breath. The air flooded into his lungs like a tidal wave of relief. He couldn’t feel a trace of the flower petals embedded in his chest; the hanahaki disease was cured, and all he had to do was embarrass himself in front of Keith. He reminded himself to thank Ulaz as he got up and changed out of his pajamas.

He glanced over at the bed, where Keith was still asleep. Keith’s hand was curled up in the blanket, clutching it close to his face. His inky black hair was splayed out over the pillow, and his face looked soft and relaxed, cast in a golden glow by the morning sunlight. He looked like a dream come to life, like he could fill Lance’s heart with joy and wonder every day for the rest of their lives.

Or at least, that was how Lance thought he  _ should _ feel, seeing him tranquil in his sleep like this, but he couldn’t quite grasp that feeling and make it sincere. Instead, he felt a gnawing emptiness opening up inside him, guilt that the feeling wasn’t there, and longing for something to fill that void. 

Frustration that Keith was not awake yet overtook the rest of his emotions, and he whapped Keith over the head with a pillow.

“Mmph. Lance!” Keith mumbled. He grabbed another pillow and threw it in Lance’s direction, but he missed, accidentally landing it on top of the lamp.

“Wake up, sleeping beauty,” Lance teased. “We have dance lessons today.”

“That’s not until eleven. We were up late last night, and you’re sick. Stay in bed with me a little longer,” said Keith, opening his arms and beckoning Lance to lie down with him.

“It’s 10:30,” said Lance.

Keith’s eyes snapped open, finally realizing the urgency of the situation. “Okay, okay, I’m awake,” he muttered, swinging his legs out of bed and getting up on the side where Lance was standing. He wrapped his arms around Lance’s waist and planted a drowsy kiss on Lance’s cheek. Then, he startled Lance by spinning him around and tackling him back onto the bed, pinning Lance down by his wrists and kissing him hard.

Keith’s lips migrated from Lance’s mouth to his neck, and Lance finally had a chance to protest. “Keith! I’m serious! We have to go!” Lance cried out through his laughter as Keith’s tongue tickled his neck.

“Fine. You’re no fun,” Keith said. He pushed himself up off the bed and stood up, wearing a cheeky smirk on his face while he made his way to the dresser.

Lance lay on the bed, breathless. He had a few minutes to catch his breath and let his heart rate slow down while Keith got ready, since he was already dressed. Those moments of spontaneity were when Keith seemed the most like Keith, and when Lance felt the most smitten, like he did in the early days of their relationship. He tried to capture the essence of that moment and hold on to it before the doubts started to seep back into his consciousness. But the sensation was fleeting, like a sunbeam that disappeared as soon as he closed his hands around it.

Keith, dressed in a white t-shirt and black jeans, held out his hand to Lance to help him up from the bed. They went downstairs to the garage of the apartment complex, where Keith’s metallic red motorcycle was parked. They put on their jackets and helmets, and Keith hopped on the bike first. Lance climbed onto the seat behind him, wrapped his arms around Keith’s waist, and held onto him for dear life as Keith sped off down the road to the dance studio downtown.

“Keith, would it kill you to drive a little slower?” Lance yelled over the roar of the road. 

“You’re the one who was giving me a hard time about being late!” Keith retorted, zooming through a yellow light as Lance’s arms tightened around his waist. 

They walked into the dance studio fifteen minutes late. “There you are! Everyone, the life of the party has arrived,” the instructor called out, which elicited a wave of giggles from the other students who were seated on couches around the studio. 

The dance instructor was Keith’s lifelong best friend, Shiro. His ambition to open his own dance studio had inspired Keith to become a martial arts instructor. Shiro had always encouraged him along the way, just like he had ever since Keith got adopted as a child and moved into town, and the way Keith’s face lit up when Shiro greeted them showed how much he still looked up to him.

Alongside Shiro as his dance partner was his husband, Curtis. Everyone, including Keith, had been shocked when Shiro got engaged last year after a six-month whirlwind romance, especially when it came on the heels of his four-year serious relationship ending in flames. But Curtis made Shiro happy, and that was all that mattered to Keith. 

“Now we can get started,” said Shiro. “Does everyone remember what we covered last time?” A noncommittal murmur rose from the gathering of students.

“Good enough,” Shiro said to the tepid reply. “Everyone, get together with your partners. Let me see you practice the waltz, let’s start with two basic steps and then an under-arm turn, and then we’ll get into the rest of the lesson.” He walked across the room to the table and pressed play on his laptop, and a slow instrumental song began to float over the speakers. “And five, six, seven, eight!”

They configured themselves face to face, with Keith’s hand on Lance’s back and Lance’s hand on top of Keith’s shoulder, and their other hands joined in between them at eye level. Lance moved backward first, even though he was supposedly dancing the follow’s part, and pulled Keith along with him. They danced the basic step easily enough, moving around in a square, but Keith didn’t give any signal when it was time to do the turn.

“Uh, I think we’re supposed to do a turn somewhere in here,” Lance prompted.

“Oh, right! I knew there was something I forgot,” Keith said. He began to hold out his arm. 

“Not right now! We need to get into position for it,” Lance said. They circled around again, and yet again it seemed like Keith was going to forget about the next step. “You’re the lead, you’re supposed to initiate the turn.”

“Well, then maybe you should be the lead,” Keith huffed. He held his arm up and Lance walked under it, but when he came back into position to link up with Keith again, he almost crashed into him, as Keith’s feet were rooted in place on the ground. 

“I’m pretty sure your feet are supposed to be moving too when I do the turn,” Lance commented. 

“They are?” Keith asked, raising an eyebrow while he looked down at his feet. 

“Yeah, to keep the rhythm. Otherwise I’m not going to know where to go when I come back,” Lance explained. 

“You looked like you were doing fine just now,” Keith pointed out.

“I know, but…” Lance let out an exasperated sigh. “It’s not  _ proper _ . It’s not how it’s supposed to be done, and it’s not going to look right.” 

“Is everything going all right over here, guys?” Shiro asked, striding across the room through the rows of other dancers to Keith and Lance. 

“We can’t seem to get the turn right,” Lance said with a vague shrug of his shoulders. He didn’t want to pin the blame on Keith, since he felt equally unsure of his own performance. 

“Maybe I can help. Lance, if you don’t mind?” Shiro held out his hand to Lance and pulled him into his hold, with his left hand on Lance’s shoulder blade. “Keith, watch carefully.” Shiro counted down the beat, and then immediately Lance felt a gentle pressure against his palm, like a rubber band had been wrapped around the point of contact between their hands. Shiro created a taut thread of tension between them, and Lance waited to see where it would pull him.

“Dance is a conversation between the lead and the follow. It’s about the connection between the two of you, and using your body to tell him where you’re moving,” Shiro said. His hand on Lance’s shoulder blade tugged him forward, and Lance stepped towards him as if pulled by elastic, stretched tight and then released. 

“When he’s moving towards you, that’s your opportunity to turn him. You have to get out of the way and invite him to keep going.” The movement of Shiro’s hand was subtle, just giving him the slightest nudge to encourage him to turn, and then guiding him seamlessly into another basic step. When Shiro let go, Lance could still feel the residual echo of the movement inside him, like a guitar string that continued to vibrate after it was plucked.

Shiro checked his watch. “I need to wrap this up now, but come talk to me after the lesson if you need some more pointers!” He hurried back across the room and paused the music.

Keith glanced from Shiro to Lance. “Did any of what he was saying make sense to you?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” Lance said. All he knew was that when he was dancing with Shiro, he felt like he knew what he was doing, but he couldn’t explain it. 

Shiro clapped his hands to get the class’s attention. “All right, everyone did a great job in the independent practice! Now, who’s ready to get into some new material?” He made his way back to Curtis, who stood in the middle of the room. “My lovely husband Curtis and I will demonstrate the routine for you.”

“That’s an improvement from when he called me his ‘ _ lovely assistant _ ’ at the last lesson,” Curtis declared. 

“Either way, you’re still lovely,” Shiro said, which earned a smile from Curtis, and a series of  _ aww _ s and  _ ugh _ s from the class in equal measure. “You can follow along if you like, or you can just watch. We’ll be going over all of these steps in detail later.”

The music swelled, and Curtis and Shiro began their dance. They looked completely lost in each other, like there was no one in the room but them. Their movements were synchronized and vibrant, and every push was met with a pull, fluidly spinning back and forth in their space. The way they smiled at each other and laughed, the way they gazed into each other’s eyes, Lance could feel the strength of their love radiating off of them.

He wished that he and Keith looked like that, so vividly in love. As much as he tried to create that same energy with Keith, something wasn’t connecting between them. All he ever got for his efforts was an aching hollowness, where the absence of that feeling made itself known.

After a couple minutes of watching the dance demonstration, Lance felt discouraged. He broke away from Keith and went to sit down on the couch. Keith followed after him and sat down next to him. “Lance? What’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing,” Lance muttered. “It’s just that… we’re not very good at dancing.”

“That’s why we’re here in this class. We’re supposed to be learning,” Keith reminded him.

“I know that,” Lance said. “But I mean, look how much better Shiro and Curtis are than us.”

“Don’t worry about that. They’ve been doing this for a lot longer than we have. If you want to, we can get there too,” Keith reassured him, placing his hand over Lance’s.

“Not in time for the wedding,” Lance said.

“Maybe not,” said Keith. “But if we run out of moves, we can just make them up. Or we can do something easier.” 

Keith stood up and held out his hand to Lance. Lance took it and let Keith pull him into his embrace, chest to chest, still holding their clasped hands up at the shoulder. Keith placed his hand on Lance’s waist and swayed his hips back and forth, following the rhythm of the music.

Lance dropped Keith’s hand and took a step away from him, and Keith frowned. “I don’t want to do that. It doesn’t look good. Look at them,” Lance said, pointing his elbow towards Shiro and Curtis. “They look like they’re having so much fun. I want us to look like that, too.”

“Maybe if you weren’t so focused on how we look, you could be having fun too,” Keith commented, a smirk replacing the wounded look on his face. “And then you’d  _ look _ like you’re having fun. Do you see the problem here?”

“I guess,” Lance sighed. “Let’s just watch for now.” He sat back down on the couch, and Keith followed.

When he had danced with Shiro, he had realized what was missing in his dance with Keith. Dancing with Keith felt like dancing by himself. He had danced by himself during his breaks at work to keep the steps fresh in his memory between lessons. It was harder to do without a partner, so he always envisioned himself with a shadow partner. But when Keith was there, he didn’t do anything more to help guide him than that imaginary partner did. He didn’t feel those sparks or signals that Shiro was such an expert at giving. Keith, as the lead, was supposed to create that tension, but the thread between them felt slack. Lance was learning the follow’s set of moves, and he wasn’t skilled enough to take over Keith’s part, so there was nothing he could do about it. At this point, he wasn’t sure if he would feel prepared to dance at the wedding at all.

But when he thought about it, he only felt more dread about what came  _ after _ the wedding. It had been his dream to get married, but the way that he had always pictured his future marriage was the same as how he thought of dancing by himself, alongside a faceless silhouette. Now, that image had been filled in by Keith, and he had to imagine a domestic life with Keith, sharing his space for the rest of their lives.

He was more excited about the wedding itself than he was about being married. He loved the intricacy of planning every detail, from the menu and the cake to the floral arrangements and the dress code. That was why their dance had to be both technically flawless and brimming with chemistry, as a showcase of their love. It was all essential to the image he wanted to create of the perfect wedding, the perfect marriage, the perfect life that he had worked so hard for and finally achieved.

The only thing he wanted more than a perfect wedding was a chance to see his family. Lance had lived on the opposite side of the country from his family ever since he went to college. He had gotten his dream job straight out of college, working at a marine mammal rehabilitation center, which was how he ended up moving to the coastal town where he met Keith. He had never expected to end up so far away from his family, and now nothing short of a wedding would bring them all together. The last time he had flown home to visit his family had been a year ago, when his older sister Veronica had gotten married to one of Lance’s former high school classmates, Nadia Rizavi. Keith hadn’t been able to come that weekend because of work, so Lance’s family would be meeting the most important person in his life for the first time at their wedding.

Keith  _ was _ the most important person in his life, he told himself. Lance cared about him deeply, and he felt a bond with him that he had never had with anyone else, either friends or romantic partners. But he wasn’t sure that how he felt was consistent with how he was supposed to feel when he was about to marry the love of his life. He wished that he could reach inside his chest and rip all his doubts out through his throat, and go back to the uncomplicated bliss that he longed for and deserved.

He was relieved when Shiro and Curtis finished their routine, and divided the room into leads and follows to begin the lesson. Even though it was a class for couples getting ready for weddings, the partner portion of the lesson was done by rotating partners after each new step, so Lance had a chance to let his complicated thoughts of Keith dissipate and just focus on practicing the dance. 

Near the end of the lesson, the partner rotation brought Lance to Shiro. Shiro said, “Hey Lance, are you doing anything after dance lessons?”

“Not much. Just going to go to the restaurant that’s doing our catering and make sure they got the change in our order. I just found out that Veronica’s gone vegan,” Lance said. “Why?”

“Do you think you could put off your wedding planning duties, just this once?” Shiro asked. “Curtis and I and the whole squad are going to the pride festival. Do you want to come?”

“Oh, right, I forgot that was this weekend,” Lance murmured. He and Keith usually went every year, but Lance had been so busy in the weeks leading up to the wedding that he had forgotten to put it on his calendar.

“Why else would I be wearing this shirt?” Shiro tugged on the hem of his shirt, which had the words ‘ _ Space Ace’  _ written on it in block letters, striped in the colors of the asexual flag.

“I mean, it’s a cool shirt,” said Lance.

“Really? Thanks!” said Shiro. “Curtis rolled his eyes when I put it on this morning.”

Down the row, Curtis, who was dancing with one of the other leads, had noticed Shiro showing off his shirt. He was smiling and his shoulders were shaking with giggles.

“So, do you want to go? Allura saved a space for you and Keith in her van,” Shiro said.

“Sure, I guess we could make time for that,” Lance said. Maybe this would be what he needed to rekindle that connection with Keith that he felt like he’d been missing.

“Great! I’ll ask Keith in just a sec.” He announced the end of the lesson, and the students milled around the room while Shiro darted off to find Keith. Lance spotted them across the room, where it looked like Keith had been hiding out next to the bathrooms. Shiro leaned in close to Keith, listening to something Keith was saying, and positioning himself to make sure no one else overheard.

He chastised himself for the pang of jealousy he felt watching Shiro and Keith, how comfortable their body language was with each other. Lance hadn’t even noticed that Keith had wandered off. Shiro was Keith’s best friend, but Lance was his fiancé, and yet he felt like Shiro knew him better than he did sometimes.

Lance made his way over to them, and at that moment, Curtis walked out of the bathroom. “We all set?” he asked.

“Yup. Allura’s here,” said Shiro, with his phone in his hand. The four of them walked outside. Allura’s silver van was parked in front of the dance studio, and she honked at them when she saw them. Allura was in the driver’s seat, and Hunk was sitting next to her in the coveted shotgun seat. He and Pidge had probably had a math problem contest over it, and he had won this time, because Pidge was pouting in the back row.

Curtis opened the side door, and he and Shiro climbed in first. The van was organized with two seats in the middle row and an aisle in between them so that people could get to the three seats in the back row. Shiro and Curtis had to duck under the van’s ceiling and squeeze into the back row on either side of Pidge. Then, Lance and Keith climbed into the middle row, Lance taking the seat behind Allura, and Keith behind Hunk.

“Are you ready to party?” Allura yelled to the passengers behind her as she turned and looked over her shoulder, putting the car in reverse while cranking up the volume on the radio.

“I brought rainbow cookies for everyone!” Hunk called. He passed the container of cookies back over his shoulder, and Lance took the box from him. He pulled out a sugar cookie with stripes of rainbow icing painted across it, and then offered the box to Keith.

Once Keith handed the box to Shiro in the back seat, Lance reached out and took Keith’s hand in his to get his attention. He leaned across the aisle and propped his elbow up on Keith’s armrest.

“Hey, what were you talking to Shiro about earlier?” Lance whispered.

“He was just asking me if I wanted to come to the pride parade, same thing he asked you,” Keith replied. “Why?”

“It just looked like you two were having a serious conversation,” said Lance.

“We weren’t,” Keith said, a little too defensively for Lance’s comfort. If he hadn’t been suspicious before, now he was  _ sure _ that they had been talking about him, but he didn’t pry any further. 

He leaned back into his seat. Keith kept his hold on Lance’s hand. Lance’s arm bounced against the arm rest as it dangled over the aisle.

“Hey, Keith?” he said.

“Yeah?” Keith turned his head towards him.

“Do you mind if I let go of your hand for now?” said Lance.

“Okay,” Keith said, and he released Lance’s hand and folded his arms, turning his head to look out the window. Even though he couldn’t admit it or explain why, Lance was grateful for the aisle between them.

~

After spending half an hour looking for parking in the city, Allura was supposed to lead the way to the parade route. She ended up too distracted by the street vendors to actually look for the parade itself. She had corralled the whole group into a line for rainbow layered margaritas, when something else caught her eye.

“Look at those bracelets!” Allura chirped, pointing across the sidewalk at a kiosk that had thousands of beaded and woven bracelets displayed in bins. She grabbed Lance by the wrist and tugged him out of the margarita line over to the bracelet stand.

“Ooh, look at these! I’m going to get one for everyone,” Allura said, poring over the woven friendship bracelets in the colors of every pride flag imaginable. While she sorted out bracelets for everyone in the group and counted the change in her wallet, Lance wandered over to the other side of the bracelet stand.

He stirred his hand around in a basket of bracelets, and found one that appeared to be misplaced. It was the only one of its kind, and when he scanned the bins nearby, he didn’t find any that looked like it. It was patterned with chevrons in gray, white, and two shades of blue, soft turquoise and bright cerulean.

He held it up to get the vendor’s attention. “Um, excuse me. Did you make all of these?”

The man standing behind the kiosk looked to be a Galra, with purple skin and large pointed ears, and no hair on his ridged head aside from a mohawk and sideburns. The severe angle of his cheekbones gave him a stern appearance, but Lance had met so many Galra through Keith’s family that he had learned not to react in a startled manner to their natural expressions. “Yes. My name is Lahn, and I make all the bracelets here in my shop,” he said. His eyes widened when he saw the bracelet that Lance was holding. “Oh, that one’s actually mine. It must have slipped off my wrist and fallen into one of the bins.”

“Oops, I’m sorry,” said Lance. “I was just looking at it because the colors are pretty. You can have it back.”

Lahn tilted his head. “Are you interested in it?” he asked.

“I don’t know. What is it?” Lance asked.

“It’s the colors of the frayromantic flag,” said Lahn.

“What’s that?” Lance asked, feeling slightly embarrassed about his lack of knowledge.

Lahn’s eyes lit up, and he seemed excited to have a chance to talk about it. “It’s an identity on the aromantic spectrum. Are you curious about it?”

“I don’t think I could be aromantic. I get crushes on people too easily,” Lance said quietly, with a self-conscious smile.

“That can be part of being frayromantic,” said Lahn. “It means that you tend to feel romantic attraction towards people you don’t know very well, but once you form a bond with them, that attraction tends to fade. It’s like the opposite of demiromantic. Do you know what that is?”

Lance probably knew more about it than Lahn assumed he did, because Keith was demiromantic. He needed to get close to someone as a friend before he could develop a romantic attraction to them. It had taken months for Keith to bond with Lance enough for the attraction to form, but Lance had felt that chemistry with Keith almost since the first time they met. “Yeah, I do. My fiancé is demiromantic,” Lance said. 

“Oh, how lovely!” said Lahn. “I could never make a long-term relationship work, myself, but I do love to see other people in love.” 

“If I’m being honest, I wasn’t sure if I would ever end up with someone, either,” Lance said. “I used to get a lot of crushes, but most of the time, they rejected me before I even got a chance to get to know them at all. Whenever I did get into relationships, those were usually short-lived. Or sometimes, we became friends instead of dating, and in that case, the attraction went away.” 

The only one who had become his friend after he had a crush on them was Allura. His crush on Allura had been marked by persistence through a long string of rejections, but the attraction had disappeared as soon as their friendship began to bloom. He glanced across the bracelet table at Allura, who was still engrossed in finding the perfect bracelet for everyone in their group. He couldn’t imagine ever feeling the same way about her as he had back then, now that they were close friends. 

And then there was Keith, the only person he had ever made a commitment to. He’d had trouble relating to Keith at first when he didn’t have the extensive dating history that Lance had. Keith being demiromantic meant that he wasn’t cursed to fall in love with everyone he met who was nice or attractive, as Lance was, but it also meant that Keith fell in love so rarely that when he did, he fell hard. Lance had felt his attraction to Keith slipping away as their relationship deepened, but he had assumed that was just the normal feeling of restlessness that everyone in a long-term relationship went through, so he had tried his best to bury those feelings and press on in the relationship as if nothing had changed. 

“I’m sorry, I’m probably oversharing,” said Lance. He didn’t know why he was telling all of this to a stranger. It felt nice to be understood, and to have a word to put to his experiences, instead of the fear that had always haunted him that he was doing love wrong. 

“I don’t mind at all,” Lahn said. “No one’s ever been so interested in that one before. Tell you what, you can have it for free.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t. It’s yours,” said Lance.

“Don’t worry about it. I can always make another one,” said Lahn. “If people are interested in it, maybe I’ll even start making enough of them to sell, too.”

“Thanks,” said Lance. Then, he noticed Allura walking over from the other side of the stall with her handful of bracelets and cash. He shoved the bracelet into his pocket before she could ask him any questions about what it meant.

“I hope you’ll wear it with pride someday,” Lahn said in a low voice, before turning his attention to Allura to help her with her purchase.

“I got, like, a zillion of the bi ones,” Allura said, holding them out to Lance. “One for you, one for me, and Keith and Shiro too.” She handed Lance one of the pink, purple, and blue bracelets. “I also got the ace one for Shiro, and I got Keith the demi one. Do you think Keith likes bracelets?”

“Hey guys, where have you been?” Hunk said from behind Lance. The rest of the group had finally made it through the margarita line and caught up with Lance and Allura at the bracelet stand.

“I bought you all bracelets!” said Allura, bubbly as always. The group gathered around her as she started handing out the bracelets. Keith pushed through the crowd and made his way to Lance, placing his hand on Lance’s hip.

“Hey, I bought you a margarita, since you disappeared from the line,” said Keith, handing Lance the cold drink.

“Wow, thanks, Keith,” said Lance. He held up the tube-shaped cup and admired the layered pastel colors of the drink before taking a sip. Even though the fruity flavor mostly masked the bitter taste of the alcohol, he still felt it burn as it slid down his throat, which was still raw after the hanahaki attack had ravaged it yesterday. “It’s good,” Lance rasped out, his throat tightening around a stifled cough.

“You’re welcome,” said Keith, and Lance was grateful that Keith didn’t seem to notice him choke. Then, with the corner of his lip quirked up in a smile, he said, “Mind if I try some?”

“I thought you didn’t like—oh,” Lance said, as Keith pressed his lips against Lance’s. He planted his hands on the edge of the bracelet table behind Lance, on either side of Lance’s hips, bracketing him in. Keith leaned in to deepen the kiss, his tongue lapping up droplets of ice from Lance’s lower lip.

Lance gently pushed Keith off of him by the shoulders. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this right here,” Lance whispered.

“It’s Pride. Showing off is the whole point. If you think I’m not going to kiss you in public, then maybe we should go home.” His teasing tone took on a note of seriousness when he said, “But we can go somewhere else if you’re more comfortable.”

“Yeah, that would be good,” Lance said.

As he took Keith’s hand and followed the rest of the group into the crowd, he glanced over his shoulder at the bracelet stand. Lahn met his eyes and tilted his head to the side with a curious expression on his face. Lance could almost hear Lahn’s wise voice in his head, asking him,  _ Is this what you really want? _

Lance rubbed his hand over the bracelet in his pocket. He hoped that he would find the answers within it somehow.


	3. Chapter 3

On the last day of summer, Keith and Lance rode Keith’s motorcycle up to the vista point off of the freeway, so that Lance could bask in the sun’s warmth one more time before it started to fade into the autumn chill. Lance wished he could capture that warmth of summer in his skin and keep it with him forever. 

The ring box weighed heavily in his pocket. He patted it to make sure that it hadn’t fallen out during the ride. He followed Keith to the edge of the outcropping, and leaned against the railing next to him, looking out over the glittering city and the ocean beyond it. 

Lance was happy, or so he told himself, but nothing was developing in his relationship with Keith anymore, and he felt stagnation starting to settle in. When the relentless activity of summer was over, they would just be going through the motions of their everyday routine. Doubt had planted its roots in him, and Lance felt the cloud of winter looming over him, threatening to kill everything left above the surface. That had been the impetus pushing him to cement what they had before it withered in the cold. 

He had been waiting for Keith to propose to him with some grand gesture, like a flash mob or a plane flying a banner, the sorts of things he had seen in movies and dreamed about having for himself. But Keith wouldn’t think of such flashy events by himself because it wasn’t his style, and it wouldn’t feel genuine if Lance had planted the idea in his head. They had talked about marriage, but it didn’t seem like the idea of proposing had crossed Keith’s mind at all, so Lance had decided to take the lead. 

He knew Keith well enough to know that his dream proposal wasn’t anything like Lance’s. It was understated and personal, and just the two of them. So he had bought a ring, black onyx with a red opalescent inlay and silver trim, and he had asked Keith to take him to the vista point to watch the sunset. 

“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” Lance commented, nudging Keith with his elbow.

“Yeah. You like these sorts of things, don’t you? Sentimental things.” Keith tilted his head towards Lance, the dimples of his smile set in high contrast by the golden sunlight. “You know, it doesn’t have to be the last day of summer to do things like this. We can come up here and watch the sunset whenever you want.”

“I know, but what better time to start a tradition?” Lance said. “Speaking of traditions, there’s something I wanted to ask you.”

“Yeah?” Keith said. His eyes followed Lance’s movement as he crouched to the ground. 

Lance bent down on one knee, then fumbled with his pocket to remove the ring box. He opened the box to reveal the ring, a ray of sunlight igniting its vibrant red. “Keith, will you marry me?”

Keith was stunned speechless, his hands clasped over his mouth. He pried them away from his face, wiping away the tears that had appeared under his eyes. “Lance, of course, yes,” he breathed, his face breaking out into a radiant smile. He held out his hand, and when Lance started to take it to slip the ring onto his finger, Keith grabbed onto his hand and pulled him up instead, drawing Lance into a tight embrace and a passionate kiss.

Once they broke the kiss, the sunlight had faded from the sky. “So, I’m thinking a June wedding, on the beach,” Lance said with a smirk.

Keith grinned so hard that his face had to hurt. “You are  _ not  _ getting me to agree to a beach wedding.”

“Come on, it’ll be fun!” said Lance. “Getting married right in front of the ocean, who wouldn’t want that?”

“Only if I get to throw you into the water after we say our vows,” Keith teased.

“Well, that’s one way of ‘taking the plunge,’ isn’t it?” Lance replied, before Keith swallowed his laughter in another kiss.

~

When Lance let his mind wander as he was trying to drift off to sleep, it had landed on the memory of the proposal. Most couples, he would expect, would reminisce about it as a fond memory, but for Lance, the recollection was always mingled with the ache of regret. He had tried to use the wedding as a patch to smooth over an already crumbling relationship, and it had worked for the past few months, but now the cracks were starting to show again. It had been a week since the pride parade, and he still didn’t know what he could do about it.

Keith was fast asleep next to him, snuggled up with his head on Lance’s shoulder and his arms tangled around his waist. They had nominally decided to go to sleep early, but only Keith had succeeded in that. Lance lay on his back with his arms folded behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. He willed his eyes to close, and his mind to empty itself and focus on going to sleep.

Then, he felt a flutter inside his chest, and his eyes snapped wide open again. His breath came in short gasps, unable to get enough air inside his lungs. Panic began to set in as he felt the flower petals filling up his lungs, shifting around inside his chest and aching to get out. He knew that another coughing fit was imminent, and he didn’t want it to happen here, in front of Keith. As delicately and calmly as he could, he pried Keith’s arms off of his waist and swung his legs out of the bed, then dashed to the bathroom.

He dropped to his knees in front of the toilet and braced himself against the bowl. The flower petals burned his throat as they surged out of his mouth in a white and crimson deluge. He collapsed to the floor as a dry cough brought up the last few stray petals, feeling like all of the energy had been drained from his body and his muscles had turned to jelly. After he caught his breath, he pushed himself to his feet and poured a handful of water from the sink, drinking from his cupped hands desperately and then splashing water on his face.

He looked up at himself in the mirror, his face flushed and swollen, his eyes rimmed with red from the coughing.

_ All you need to do is be honest with yourself. _

So much for that. He had opened his heart and humbled himself, and gotten reassurance of Keith’s love for him, and yet the flower petals in his lungs were still there. Ulaz’s natural cure hadn’t worked, and if anything, his hanahaki disease was hurting him even worse.

Or maybe it didn’t work because he  _ hadn’t _ been honest with himself. He had dredged up old feelings, but he hadn’t examined whether those feelings were the source of his distress. The hanahaki disease was rooted deep, and he couldn’t pull it out by the roots until he could unearth its cause.

He reached up to the counter for his phone, which he had brought with him into the bathroom, and called Allura. “Hey, Lance, what’s up?” she answered cheerfully. She probably thought based on the hour that he was inviting her out for a fun night of clubbing, but she trailed off when she realized there was no music in the background.

“Hey, Allura. Listen, I need you to take me to the clinic again,” Lance rasped, a few coughs punctuating his words.

“Lance? What’s going on?” she asked, concern dripping into her voice.

“Just come quickly,” he said, and hung up before she could hear the worst of it. He felt another burst of petals coming up, and he barely had a chance to put his phone down before he was wracked with coughs again.

Twenty minutes later, he got a text from Allura saying “ _ I’m here _ .” Lance drank some more water from the sink before he headed out of the bathroom. He passed by the closed door to the bedroom, considering going in to grab his jacket, but not wanting to disturb Keith. His shoes and one of Keith’s motorcycle jackets were in the entryway, so he put on those before walking out the front door and down the stairs.

As soon as he climbed into the passenger seat of Allura’s van, she launched into the interrogation. “Okay, Lance, I’ve had enough of you hiding things from me. Why do you need to go to the clinic?”

“I was coughing up flower petals again,” said Lance.

“I thought you told me that Ulaz said it was nothing,” Allura argued.

“I guess it wasn’t,” Lance said.

“You’re evading the question. You said that you had just inhaled some flower petals. How could it happen again if you weren’t around flower petals? There’s something you’re not telling me,” Allura pressed on.

“All right. You got me. I lied when I came out of Ulaz’s office the first time. Great detective work,” Lance sighed, throwing his arms up in exasperation.

“I’m not trying to put you on trial here. I just want you to tell me what’s really going on,” Allura insisted.

“Fine,” Lance said. “Ulaz said that I have hanahaki disease. I have flowers growing in my lungs and I’m coughing them up. He said the disease is usually caused by unrequited love.”

Allura stared ahead at the stoplight, which cast her skin in a scarlet glow. “Unrequited love?” she asked. “For Keith?”

“That’s what I thought too,” Lance said. “But Keith loves me. There’s no way I could be wrong about that. And even if I was, the disease is supposed to go away when you’re honest with yourself. Telling Keith that I loved him made it go away for a little while, but now it’s back. I don’t know what to do.”

They pulled into the empty parking lot in front of the Marmora Minute Clinic. The windows were covered, and there was no light trickling out from between the blinds. “I hope they’re open. It’s past 10 pm,” Allura murmured.

She parked in front of the building, and Lance hopped out of the van. Allura started to dismount, too, but Lance held up his hand. “You didn’t come with me last time because Regris stopped you, but… if you could let me go in by myself this time, too, I’d appreciate it. This is my business. I’ll call you when I’m ready to be picked up, okay?”

Allura pouted and let out an indignant sigh. “All right. Good luck,” she said. Once she let Lance out of the car, she drove over to the nearby café.

Lance knocked on the door, looking up at the sign with trepidation. It said that they closed more than an hour ago. If this didn’t work, where would he go? Ulaz said that a regular hospital would have no idea what to do with him. Would he stalk Ulaz to his house? What were the chances that Keith would be there? Lance realized with a jolt that he had left his phone in Allura’s car again. If Keith woke up, and didn’t get a reply when he texted him, there was a high chance that he would go cruising around the city looking for him.

Lance gave up knocking, and tried the handle. It was locked, of course, but his desperation told him that if he jiggled it hard enough, it might open. He didn’t know what he would do if he got inside and there was no one there. Maybe he could try looking through Ulaz’s files about the rare condition of hanahaki disease and see if there were any alternative cures.

Just when he was about to chase after Allura and tell her he’d given up, the door creaked open. “We’re closed,” a gruff voice muttered. Then, a light flickered on inside the clinic, illuminating Thace’s shocked face. “Lance?”

“Thace?” Lance replied, equally surprised. He knew that Thace occasionally visited his husband at work, but he didn’t expect him to be here hours after closing. “What are you doing here?”

“Ulaz was working late on his notes, so I came here to pick him up, and I was keeping him company while he finished his work,” Thace said, and the ruffled state of his fur gave Lance an unwanted hint to just what sort of  _ company _ he meant. Lance regretted that turn of thought immediately, and he cringed to think of the extent of what went on in Ulaz’s personal office. “But the more important question is, what are you doing here?”

“I need Ulaz’s help,” Lance said. “But I don’t want to bother you if you’re closed…”

“Don’t worry about it. You’re family to us,” said Thace, and that alone sent a twinge of regret shuddering down Lance’s spine. If whatever was going on with the hanahaki disease damaged his relationship with Keith, they  _ wouldn’t _ be his family anymore. “Come on, I’ll show you inside.” Lance followed him inside the clinic, through the waiting room and down the hallway past the exam rooms and X-ray machine, to the open door of Ulaz’s office.

Ulaz sat at his desk surrounded by mountains of papers, peering at the sheet in his hand through a pair of small round spectacles perched on his nose. “Who was it?” Ulaz asked, not looking up from his laptop, transcribing words from the page onto the screen.

“Hi, Dr. Ulaz,” Lance said with a wave.

Ulaz’s ears twitched, and his head jerked to look up at Lance. “Lance! How are you feeling? Did confessing your feelings help?”

“No…” Lance said. “That’s why I’m here, actually.” He trailed off, and followed Ulaz’s gaze to Thace, who was still standing behind him.

As if they had a telepathic connection, Thace responded to the question Ulaz didn’t ask out loud. “I can leave if you want. Ulaz, do you want something from the café? I’m not getting you coffee this late at night, but maybe some nice relaxing chamomile tea…”

“Actually, you can stay,” said Lance. “I think you might be able to help, too.” He looked to Ulaz. “If I give him my permission, is that okay?”

“It’s up to you, Lance,” said Ulaz. “This isn’t going to be officially documented or anything. He can stay if you like.”

“As long as he doesn’t tell any of this to Keith, or Allura,” Lance said.

“Of course I won’t,” Thace said, sitting down on the couch beside Ulaz’s desk.

Ulaz pulled a file out of one of the drawers near his feet, and flipped it open. “So, Lance, what happened when you confessed your feelings to Keith?”

“It helped, for a little while,” Lance said, flopping down into the chair across from Ulaz’s desk. “I told him about feeling like he’s too cool for me, like he’s out of my league, like I don’t deserve him. And he told me that he loves me more than anything, and I felt better. But then tonight, it came back.” 

“Were you honest with yourself when you told him those things?” Ulaz asked.

“I… don’t know,” Lance sighed heavily. “I  _ thought _ I was being honest. I  _ did _ feel those things at one point, but when I said it to him, I felt like I was just making it up as I went along, because I knew what he was going to say. I knew that he loved me—I didn’t need him to tell me that.”

“I was afraid of this,” Ulaz mused. “Lance, the results of the tests I ran on your flower petal came back. They were like nothing I had ever seen before. Basically, even though the flowers are growing within you as though they are very much alive, the cells of the flower petal itself behave as though they are long dead and withered. Your hanahaki case is extremely unusual, and the natural cure may not work as it has for others.”

“Did you at least figure out what caused it?” Lance asked desperately. “If it’s not because of unrequited love for Keith, then why is this happening to me?”

“May I take a look at that?” Thace asked, walking behind Ulaz’s desk and holding out his hand for the petri dish where one of Lance’s first flower petals was sealed in preservatives. Ulaz handed it to him, and Thace held it up to the light, rotating it around.

“I think I might know what’s causing it, although you might not like it, Lance,” said Thace. “Ulaz, you said that the flowers present in hanahaki are extremely symbolic, right?”

“Yes,” said Ulaz. “Usually, we start with the color, which indicates the person that the feelings are directed towards. Then, the associations of the flower can represent the more specific feelings towards that person.”

“How do you know so much about hanahaki disease?” Lance asked. “I tried to search for information about it, but all I could find on the internet was people saying it was fake and made-up.”

“It is rare, so there is still skepticism about it,” Ulaz said. “My motivation to research hanahaki disease was that I had it once.”

“Really?” Lance said, unable to hide his surprise. 

Ulaz nodded. “It happened when I was in medical school in Japan, which was a hub for Galra relations with Earth at the time. That’s why the name is in Japanese. I documented the first known real case of hanahaki disease, and it was my own. And I’m sure you can guess who it was for.”

“You know, if you had just told me about it, I would have said that I felt the same way,” Thace chimed in, a fond smile growing on his face.

“But I didn’t know that,” Ulaz said. “For months, I suffered with hanahaki disease, convinced that Thace didn’t love me back. Then, I confessed my feelings to him, and I discovered the natural cure, and also got together with my future husband.”

“Ulaz’s hanahaki had purple rose petals,” said Thace. “Purple roses represent love at first sight. He said that it started happening after he bumped into me at the library.” Thace winked at Ulaz, who looked away bashfully. “Your flowers might be symbolic too, Lance.”

Thace held the flower petal in front of Lance, pointing to the red streaks and the pinked edges. “This is a variegated carnation petal. They’re pretty, but they’re not very nice flowers to give to someone you love. They represent refusal, rejection, regret that you cannot share the love someone has for you.”

Ulaz bolted upright in his chair, his eyes gleaming with realization. “You’re brilliant, Thace,” said Ulaz. When Thace passed by on his way back to the couch, he leaned down and got a nuzzle on the cheek from Ulaz. “His flower knowledge has helped me numerous times when I’ve been stumped on a hanahaki case. When you put that meaning together with my assessment that the flower is dead, it leads to a rather dire conclusion. Lance, your hanahaki disease is unique in that it does not stem from unrequited love. You have it because you have fallen out of love with Keith.”

Lance felt his stomach hurtling into his throat, not from another burst of flowers, but like he was genuinely about to throw up. “No, that can’t be true,” he said. “Dr. Ulaz, if this disease is caused by unrequited love, wouldn’t  _ Keith _ be the one getting it if I don’t love him back?” He didn’t wish for his suffering to be transferred onto Keith, but he just wanted to believe any way he could that what Ulaz said wasn’t true.

“Hanahaki is all about perception,” Ulaz reminded him. “Keith hasn’t noticed that anything has changed. It’s only  _ your _ feelings that have faded over time. But I imagine that falling out of love with someone who loves you, and with whom you have a committed relationship, feels as much like being suffocated from the inside as unrequited love does.”

“I haven’t fallen out of love with Keith. I love him and I want to be with him,” Lance insisted, his voice harsh and cold. If he said it enough times, he could believe that it was true, that everything wasn’t falling apart around him.

“Lance, denial is the worst thing you can do with hanahaki disease,” said Ulaz. “If you keep denying your feelings, the disease will spread through your whole body, and being honest with him won’t be enough to cure it anymore. You will need the feelings to be reciprocated, and getting Keith to fall out of love with you is going to be harder than just admitting it.”

“You just tell me that I feel something, and then you tell me that if I say you’re wrong, I’m in denial?” Lance snapped. His burst of anger was followed by tears prickling in his eyes, and he wiped his cheek with the back of his hand as the tears started to fall. “I can’t tell this to Keith. It would break his heart. I care about him way too much to do that. I haven’t even told him about the hanahaki disease, because I don’t want him to worry about me.”

“It sounds like you’ve been forcing yourself to stay in a situation that isn’t making you happy, and the hanahaki disease is your body’s way of telling you that you need to do something about it. You must tell him before the disease progresses any further,” said Ulaz.

“What if I don’t? Will I die of this disease?” asked Lance. Death sounded like a better fate than having to tell Keith the truth, anyway. He would deserve it for causing Keith pain.

“No known cases have resulted in death, no,” said Ulaz. “Hanahaki is a chronic affliction. I did know one patient who had an advanced stage of hanahaki, and the object of her affection just didn’t feel the same way about her, no matter how many times she confessed. I still see her every year, to check on whether her disease has gotten any better. It hasn’t.” Ulaz sighed. “But I don’t blame the person she loved for causing her to suffer by not loving her back. They can’t force themselves to love someone, any more than you can force yourself to love Keith.”

Lance thought of having hanahaki disease forever. It would be impossible to hide it from Keith, and he would find out about it eventually. But it would still be better than betraying his promise to stay with Keith.

“Yes, I can,” Lance insisted. “My mom always told me that love is a choice. That the most successful couples are the ones who don’t give up after they lose the spark, but keep working together to build a life for both of them.”

“All of that is true,” said Ulaz. He cast his eyes to Thace with a knowing gaze, and Thace nodded along with him in unison. “Thace and I know well that the key to a lasting marriage is compromise. But more than that, it’s communication.”

“Ulaz is right,” Thace said. “If you hesitate to tell your partner your concerns because you’re afraid it will hurt them, then you’re lying to yourself and your partner, and that’s a sign that the relationship might not be right for you.”

“But we do communicate,” Lance defended himself, although his voice faltered. He recalled when Keith had challenged him about not spending enough time with him, and Lance hadn’t really offered him any solutions to that. He already wasn’t doing a good job of working to make the relationship last.

“We’re not saying that you don’t,” said Thace. “We’re just saying that you should be honest about how you’re feeling, and see how it goes. If Keith cares about you as much as you do about him, and I know he does, he’ll listen to you and find a way to adjust the relationship so that it works for both of you.”

“What if I fall back in love with Keith? Will the hanahaki disease go away then?” Lance asked.

“I suppose,” said Ulaz. “When those with normal hanahaki fall out of love with the person they desire, the hanahaki usually goes away when the unrequited love does. But that might be the hardest option of all, even more so than suffering chronic hanahaki, because you cannot will yourself to change your feelings.”

“I can, and I will,” Lance said, as he felt the tears begin to trickle down his face again. “Thanks for all your help, but I’ll handle it on my own from here.”

Lance stood up to storm out the door of Ulaz’s office. He patted his pocket, and then sheepishly turned around. “Actually, do you mind if I borrow your phone to call Allura? I left my phone in her car.”

~

When Lance climbed back into Allura’s car, she noticed the tear streaks on his face immediately. “What’s wrong, Lance?” she asked.

“They said that my hanahaki might not be curable,” said Lance. He had weighed his options before he walked out of Ulaz’s office. Falling back in love with Keith was the only painless option, but as far as he was concerned, he already loved Keith, just not in the way he needed to. He loved him enough that he wouldn’t dare hurt him by telling him the real reason behind the hanahaki disease.

“Why not?” Allura demanded. 

“It’s not their fault. It’s mine,” said Lance with a defeated sigh. The strain of the secret that he carried had become too great to bear. If he could trust Keith’s parents not to tell Keith, then there was no reason that he shouldn’t trust his best friend. “They said I fell out of love with Keith, and that’s why I have hanahaki disease.”

Allura’s face showed none of the shock that he expected, only knowing empathy. “I had sensed that there was trouble in paradise between you and Keith,” she said softly.

“Sensed? What do you mean?” said Lance.

“I’m mildly psychic, remember?” Allura said, tapping her temple. “I can sense the emotions of others. I felt an aura of unease around you back when we were at the flower shop, but I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t want to influence you. Sometimes it’s hard being right.”

“You can say that again,” Lance said. He didn’t need psychic abilities to read his own emotions, and he had been feeling dissatisfied in his relationship with Keith since as far back as before he proposed. He had hoped that the solution would be as easy as Ulaz said it was for typical hanahaki, but he had known even at his first visit with Ulaz that something wasn’t quite right. Hearing the news was like having all of his worst fears confirmed. Dark clouds loomed in the starless sky overhead, threatening a summer storm, like the one that was raging inside Lance’s thoughts. 

“So is there a way to cure it?” Allura asked.

“The only cure is for the feelings to be reciprocated. They said I have to tell him, but I can’t. I can’t break his heart like that,” Lance said. 

“Say that he took it well. What would be stopping you then?” Allura pried.

“I… I don’t know.” Lance had spent so much time thinking about Keith’s feelings in this whole mess that he had barely thought about his own. All he wanted was for things to go back to being simple, but if that wasn’t an option, where would he go from here? If he and Keith broke up, the hollowness that resided in his chest, the empty space where feelings should be, would transform into something like a black hole, an undeniable void. As much turmoil as his relationship with Keith gave him, he couldn’t imagine his life without it, either. “I’d be lonely, I guess,” he said, watching the first tiny drops of rain stick to the windshield.

“You wouldn’t have to be,” said Allura. “You’d have me.”

“I know I’d still have you as a friend,” Lance continued. “But it’s not just that. I’d have to get used to a whole new lifestyle if I didn’t have him…” 

“I don’t mean as a friend,” Allura interrupted. “I mean that we could give dating a try.”

“What?” Lance croaked.

“It sounds like you feel trapped in your relationship with Keith, and you’re looking for an exit. But you don’t want to leave unless there’s something else waiting for you,” Allura said. “I’ve been waiting for you all this time. I know I rejected you a lot in the past, but I really was starting to develop a crush on you, and then all of a sudden you were dating Keith. I never hoped that you and he would break up for my own sake, but if you do, then maybe we could finally have a chance.” 

Allura smiled, as if she thought she was doing him a favor, and not jamming a wrench into an already complicated situation. It felt wrong somehow, knowing that his best friend had harbored a crush on him for as long as he’d been with Keith, as if she had been waiting for the moment when they would fall apart to make her move. He of all people knew that no one could control their feelings, but that didn’t stop him from feeling betrayed. 

“I’m sorry, Allura, but I just don’t think of you that way anymore,” Lance confessed. “I want to be able to confide in you without all these romantic feelings complicating it.”

“You could at least try to let me down gently,” said Allura, frowning. “I’m pouring my heart out to you here.”

“And I’m suffering from an incurable illness that’s making me question my longest-running relationship and ruining my plans to get married in two weeks,” Lance replied coldly. “You really don’t understand me. Not every one of my problems revolves around you, Allura!”

Silence settled over the car, broken only by the patter of raindrops falling on the windshield. Lance watched them trickle down in rivulets, merging together and then separating again.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that,” said Lance.

“That’s okay. I shouldn’t have said anything either,” Allura said. She huffed out a frustrated sigh. “Can we just drive and forget that this ever happened?”

“Yeah. Good plan,” Lance agreed. But he couldn’t forget the feeling that the only thing he had left to hold onto had just crumbled to sand between his fingers.


	4. Chapter 4

The short walk from the curb where Allura dropped him off to the entrance of his apartment building still left Lance drenched with rain. He stepped inside the apartment and shook the droplets out of his hair, thankful that Keith’s jacket had mostly saved his clothes from getting wet. He wiped his shoes on the mat and pushed them off, using his socked feet to navigate the entryway in total darkness. He couldn’t turn on the light, lest it trickle down the hall and wake up Keith.

The lamp flashed on in the living room. Keith sat in the armchair with one ankle crossed over the other knee, his elbow perched on the armrest. Despite his apparently relaxed posture, he held tension in every muscle, like a bowstring drawn back with an arrow ready to shoot. The cold glare in Keith’s indigo eyes froze any excuses in Lance’s throat.

“Where have you been?” Keith asked, his voice as icy as his gaze. 

Lance shrugged. He felt guilty for brushing off Keith’s concern, but after everything that had happened that night, he was too exhausted to reassure Keith and keep his secret at the same time. “I was with Allura,” said Lance, with a vague wave of his hand. 

The creases on Keith’s worry-wrought face softened slightly. “I’m glad that you were with someone who can keep you safe,” said Keith. “What were you doing?” 

He  _ couldn’t  _ tell Keith what was really happening, and Keith was already backing him into a corner. “Just… hanging out,” Lance deflected again.

“There’s something you’re not telling me, Lance,” Keith said. At long last, the arrow was fired. It still pierced his chest all the same, even though he had braced himself for it. 

Lance’s shoulders tensed, holding themselves at right angles. “You’re right. There are things I haven’t told you. Things I  _ can’t _ tell you,” Lance admitted. “Does that make you angry with me?”

“No, I’m not angry,” Keith replied. He rose from his chair and moved toward Lance in the entryway, arms outstretched. Lance recoiled from the gesture. Keith’s eyebrows furrowed when he noticed the subtle movement, but he only reached out to pull the jacket from Lance’s shoulders, and drape it over the coat rack. He stood an arm’s length away, a safe distance, and the space between them felt like a tangible barrier.

Keith crossed his arms and cast his eyes to the floor as he struggled to find his words. “I know there’s some things you can’t tell me, and that’s okay. You’re entitled to your privacy. You have your own life and friends, and I respect that. It hurts when you won’t tell me, because I can see that you’re hurting and I don’t know what I can do to help you, but I’m not going to pry.”

“Keith… I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you,” Lance said. It seemed like no matter how much he tried to avoid it, that was all he could manage to do at every turn. “If you really want to know, I could tell you. It’s just that the truth might hurt you more than not knowing.”

“It’s your choice whether you want to tell me or not. I want you to be comfortable enough to tell me anything, but ultimately it’s up to you. But I just want you to know that whatever you’re going through, I will support you no matter what,” Keith said. “After all, that’s what I’m swearing to do at our wedding in two weeks. I wouldn’t be much of a husband if I got mad at you for something like this, would I?”

Of course Keith would understand, and respect his privacy. Keith was nothing if not understanding. Lance felt foolish for expecting anything else. He let out a soft breath of a laugh through his nose. “I wouldn’t say that you would be a bad one…” he said. The reminder of the wedding set him on edge, but he managed to hide it behind his smile. 

“Lance. Come here,” Keith said, opening his arms again, and this time Lance stepped into the embrace and let Keith enfold him. Keith’s hugs were full of sincerity, hugs so tight that they squeezed out all the spaces in his soul where insecurity dwelled and filled them with light and warmth. If anything ever happened that he stopped hugging Lance like this, Lance would miss it. They stood like that for a long while, their feet side by side on the floor, while Keith nuzzled his face against Lance’s shoulder and pressed his lips to his neck. 

“I want to show you something,” Keith whispered, his breath ghosting over the sensitive skin below Lance’s ear.

“Okay,” said Lance. They parted slightly, just enough for Keith to lead Lance to the center of the living room. Then, Keith broke the hug and crossed the room to the bookshelf, where he pulled out a vinyl record sleeve.

Keith was the type of music fanatic who bought new releases on vinyl as collector’s items. It wasn’t just old music that sounded better on vinyl, he claimed, but all music. Lance couldn’t tell the difference himself, but he didn’t mind indulging Keith’s obsession. Whenever Lance was struggling to find a gift for Keith for some small occasion, such as an apology or congratulations gift, he would just pick an album that Keith loved to listen to on his phone and buy him a record of it, and Keith reacted with just as much surprise and elation every time. 

Keith placed the record on the player and set it in motion, and the slow strumming of an acoustic guitar drifted from the speakers. He returned to Lance and enveloped him in a hug again, this time wrapping his arms around Lance’s waist and letting Lance rest his arms on top of Keith’s shoulders. He started to sway his hips, setting the rhythm to the slow melody of the music. Lance shifted his weight back and forth on his feet, and wondered if this was all that Keith was planning to show him. 

When the first chorus kicked in, Keith withdrew from Lance, putting some distance between them. The movement was just abrupt enough that it made Lance catch his breath. Once Lance’s hands dropped from Keith’s shoulders, Keith caught them in both of his and held them at waist level. With their hands joined, Keith pulled Lance back to him in one fluid movement, and Lance found himself flush against Keith’s chest. 

Keith smirked at Lance’s startled expression and the light blush that dusted his cheeks. He raised his hand up to his chest, so that their hands touched palm to palm, and used the leverage to push him out again. Lance stumbled back and nearly lost his balance, but Keith pulled him back into his arms again just as quickly, leaving him breathless.

“Whoa, Keith. When did you learn to dance like this?” Lance commented.

“I practiced,” Keith replied simply.

This wasn’t the kind of practice he could do by himself. He had improved at dancing with a partner. His leading was so skillful that Lance felt like he knew what the next move was, even though he wasn’t familiar with the dance at all. “Did someone help you?”

“Yeah. Shiro gave me a private lesson,” said Keith. “I told him how I felt like you were pulling away from me lately, and he had the idea to show me how to dance, as a way to show you how much I care about you.” Keith raised his arm and pushed Lance’s shoulder to spin him in a turn, pulling him back just in time before he knocked his shins into the coffee table. “Shiro noticed how much you enjoyed dancing with him, and I know how much dance matters to you, so I wanted to be able to give you that experience. If it’s important to you, I want to be a part of it.”

As the song soared to a crescendo, Lance wasn’t even thinking about keeping his footwork in time with the music. He was only focused on keeping up with Keith, entrusting him with his body’s movements, and that was exactly how he wanted it to be. 

When dancing with the right person, the dance just came naturally, even though he didn’t know the steps. He felt like he was in a movie, with the camera out of focus and sparkles falling in the air around him, at the moment when he realized  _ the one _ was right in front of him all along. 

The song faded into silence, and they finished their dance with Lance’s back against Keith’s chest, his arms crossed over each other and hands reaching over his shoulders to link with Keith’s. He couldn’t remember how Keith had managed to get him into that position, only that he must have been having too much fun to overthink it. Warmth surged through Lance’s chest. 

“How was that, love?” Keith asked.

“Very impressive,” Lance replied. But something had interrupted the moment that he had been enjoying just seconds ago, like a thorn snagging on his clothes while walking past a rose bush. “You said I can tell you anything, right?” he asked hesitantly.

“Of course,” Keith said. He released Lance from the embrace and pulled back slightly, searching Lance with an expectant gaze. “What is it?”

“I don’t really want you to call me ‘ _ love _ ’ anymore. Or any pet names, really,” said Lance. “It just bothers me. I don’t know why.”

“Oh… I’m sorry,” Keith murmured. Lance expected him to defend himself, or say something about how he used to like it, or pry for more explanation, but none of those words came. Instead, all he said was, “I won’t do it anymore if it makes you uncomfortable.”

Lance was hushed by surprise for a moment. “Thank you, Keith.” 

Every day, Keith exceeded his expectations of what a relationship was supposed to be like. Keith treated him with respect and listened to him, which ought to be the bare minimum, yet he had seen so many relationships, many that had lasted much longer than his, in which that was a rare luxury. They had their fights, but Keith always knew how to treat him even better than Lance treated himself. Lance didn’t know how he had gotten so lucky or what he had done to deserve him. 

Keith hooked his pinky around Lance’s, and led him back to the bedroom. The giddy sensation that he had felt earlier when they finished their dance trickled back into Lance’s heart, warm and gold like honey, and he let himself embrace it this time. How could he feel an emptiness inside his chest when Keith had more than enough heart to fill both of them? How could he let himself suffocate in hanahaki petals when Keith was right here, breathing so much love into him?

He hadn’t felt this way about Keith in such a long time, but it was a relief to remember how it felt again. It took him back to before he and Keith were even together, when he would feel a spark of excitement every time he saw Keith in a group of friends. Before he and Keith had settled into their routine, there was a time when every text and glance and brush of hands set off a storm of questions about what it meant and where they were headed next. That was a feeling that Lance knew how to define, that flutter in his chest at the thought of Keith, and it was what he knew as being in love.

By capturing that feeling again, he felt like he could make the flowers growing in his lungs lose their hold. At first, he didn’t want to believe it, because he didn’t believe that it could be that easy, but with each breath he felt more sure. He already felt relief rushing through him, the relief of a deep breath filling lungs that were finally unbound. He breathed, over and over again, savoring the feeling of the pure air flowing into him, not stirring a single petal. 

Falling back in love with Keith was the cure he had been searching for. Ulaz said that it wouldn’t be easy, because he couldn’t change his feelings, but it was the easiest thing he could imagine. Because Keith made himself easy to love. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this chapter to [Your Guardian Angel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7Em4fUOrZo) by The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, but you can imagine them dancing to any song you like. :D


	5. Chapter 5

The evening was perfect. Fairy lights strung over Keith’s backyard from the edge of the roof to the back fence illuminated the patio and the pool, while the last rays of the summer sun disappeared over the horizon. The sky was painted in pink and purple, and the blazing heat of summer had given way to a cool, soothing breeze. The air was still warm enough that the guests, clad in shorts and swimsuits, could mill around the backyard with drinks in their hands, talking and laughing.

Keith’s family had offered their house for a party one week before the wedding, which served as both a wedding shower and a bachelor party. When Lance had invited them, his friends, especially Allura, had jokingly ribbed him about why he wasn’t going all out with a traditional bachelor party with strippers and questionably shaped party favors. Lance had given the excuse that it was cheaper to hold it at Keith’s parents’ house than to go on a vacation dedicated to wild partying, but the real reason was much more sentimental. Lance might have had the reputation of being a party animal, but nothing made him happier than spending time with his friends, and the person he loved. 

Right now, Keith was the center of attention. Since he had lived there for nearly his whole life, many of the guests were his invitees: relatives from his extended Galra family, or family friends of Thace and Ulaz’s businesses, or former students from his martial arts studio. Many of them hadn’t seen him in years and were clamoring to catch up with him about the biggest development in his life. 

Lance, on the other hand, had only lived in the town for about four years, and so he hardly knew anyone at the party aside from his own close-knit group of about six friends. He clung to Keith’s side, hands wrapped around Keith’s arm or fingers interlaced with Keith’s, while Keith mingled with the guests. Keith was glowing with excitement to share his love for Lance with everyone he knew. Like in their dance, Lance let Keith take the lead, and was swept off his feet by how the introverted Keith he knew transformed into a social butterfly in a crowd.

Keith’s attention was drawn away from the party by the creak of the garden gate. Four women walked into the backyard, and the one in the front of the group waved to Keith. “Acxa!” Keith called out, letting go of Lance’s hand as he flung his arm straight up into the air to wave back to her. He dashed through the crowd to meet her halfway across the lawn, and tackled her in a tight hug. 

“Sorry I’m late,” Acxa said. “Ezor had a wardrobe emergency.” 

“That’s okay. All that matters is that you made it,” Keith replied. “I didn’t want to do this part until you were here to see it.”

The sound of a spoon clanging against a champagne glass rang out across the backyard, hushing the party guests. All of them looked toward Keith, whose confident demeanor was slightly dampened by the sudden number of eyes on him. A bashful grin broke out across his face as he slowly placed the spoon back on the patio table, still holding the glass. His shoulders hunched inward and he reached out and grabbed Lance’s hand, squeezing tight for comfort. Lance gave him a squeeze back, although he had no idea what Keith was planning. 

Thace and Ulaz, standing at the edge of the pool, beckoned him over. Keith tugged on Lance’s hand, and Lance trailed along as Keith made his way through the crowd to the pool. Ulaz handed Keith a microphone, and then took a seat next to Thace on one of the pool chairs. Lance didn’t know that Keith was going to give a speech, and he didn’t have one of his own prepared, so he sat down next to Allura. 

Allura smiled at him. They had texted their apologies, but hadn’t seen each other in person since their fight in the car. Lance wasn’t sure what to make of that smile, whether he could trust her again or not, so he turned his face back to Keith. 

Keith tapped on the microphone, which sent a screech echoing through the backyard from the speakers on the patio. “Guess it’s on,” Keith muttered, mostly to himself, but everyone could hear it amplified by the microphone. Then, he looked up, and forced a perky grin onto his face. “Uh, hello, everyone. Good evening, I mean,” he began. 

Lance gave him two thumbs up and grinned at him.

“Thank you all for coming,” Keith continued. “It’s so good to see you all here to celebrate the best time of my life… and the most important person in my life.”

The crowd clapped and cheered, and Lance shielded his face in his hands, blushing.

“First of all, I want to thank my dads,” said Keith. “For hosting this party, for one thing. I know it was a hassle, and it wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t shooed me out of the kitchen, because otherwise I probably would have burned the place down.” That earned a surge of laughter from the crowd, including Thace, who was shushed by a nudge in the elbow from Ulaz.

“But also for everything else they’ve done for me, and the life that they gave me a chance to have. It wasn’t always like this. I remember a time when I didn’t have anyone to rely on. After my mom abandoned me, I was adrift, and it was hard for me to learn to trust anyone for a long time after that.”

The laughter had quickly hushed. No one knew quite how to respond to such a serious statement being dropped so casually and publicly.

“But then, a lot of people came into my life and made it safe for me to love again. My dads, who adopted me and gave me a home. Shiro, who mentored me and encouraged me to follow my passion. And then I met Lance.”

Lance felt something warm stirring in his chest. He wanted to call it love, but it had a physical weight to it, and it was localized in his lungs, not his heart. 

“Lance, you were the only person who looked at me without pity, even when I told you what I had been through. You saw me as an equal, not a project to fix, but by doing that, you gave us both the strength to become better versions of ourselves.”

The warmth  _ burned _ now, and fluttered like flames licking their way up into his throat. He reached up to his neck as if to loosen a tight collar, even though his shirt was unbuttoned to his chest.

_ No _ . Not like this. He thought he was cured. But Keith’s outpouring of sincerity had triggered it again, when Lance realized that this was how Keith saw their love, and that he didn’t feel the same. 

“I always felt the most like myself when I was around you, even though it took me a long time to realize it. And when I did, I didn’t think anything would ever happen. I’m usually pretty dense about these things. When we met, I was pretty sure that you were into Allura.”

That got a laugh, not as widespread as the first one, but more emphatic from the few who were in on the joke. The loudest laugh came from Allura herself, sitting behind Lance on the pool chair. Where his hand rested on the chair behind him, Allura shifted her hand so that her fingertips brushed over his, and he pulled his hand back as if stung and placed his hands in his lap. He normally would have interpreted it as a comforting gesture, since the taut expression on his face was probably plain to see. But after what happened in the car that night, he didn’t know how she meant it, and  _ that _ was the last thing he wanted to think about right now, when he was focusing all his efforts on trying to breathe through the heaviness in his lungs. 

“But then I started to hang out with you more, and then what I thought was just wanting to get to know you better turned into crushing hard. Thankfully, you’re a lot better at these things than I am. When you asked me out, I said yes, and the rest is history, as you all know by the fact that you’re here.”

Keith looked at Lance, his indigo eyes as deep as the dusk sky above them, shining with reflections of the fairy lights like the first evening stars. Lance could taste the petals on his tongue now. They gathered in his mouth, spilling out of his throat, barely contained behind his lips.

“I said yes, just like I said yes when you proposed, and I promise to keep saying yes to you every single day of my life.” Keith held out his hand to Lance and clasped his arm, leaning down to pull him up from the pool chair. “Now, Lance, are you ready to take the plunge?”

Lance’s body froze as he realized what Keith meant. Lance didn’t know that Keith had saved that idea from all the way back when he proposed and decided to use it at their pool party. He tried to protest; he didn’t feel like his hanahaki would cooperate with being thrown into the pool. But if he opened his mouth, all the flower petals would spill out.

He resolutely clamped his mouth shut, and let Keith lift him into his arms. He felt weightless for a moment as Keith’s arms disappeared from beneath him and sent him sailing into the deep end of the pool. 

Lance took a deep breath before he made contact with the water. Or at least, he tried to. The flower petals had filled his mouth, making it impossible to gulp down more than a shallow gasp. His back hit the water, knocking the wind out of him, and when he tried to take another breath, it was too late, because his face was already submerged. Water rushed into his mouth, and petals and bubbles floated up to the surface in a column of red, white, and silver. 

A hand plunged through the water towards him and he reached out to it. Keith’s arms encircled him, his chest pressed against Lance’s back as he swam to the side of the pool. Lance gasped for air when his face broke the surface of the water again. Keith heaved Lance out of the pool first, helping him onto a towel that Hunk and Allura had laid out. Lance lay there, coughing and gasping on the pool’s edge, while Keith clambered out of the water after him. Keith curled his body over Lance, cradling his face in his hands. 

“Lance, I’m so sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, oh my God,” Keith cried. He was so close that Lance could see the water droplets on his face mingling with tears. 

Lance had just nearly drowned, and all he wanted was for Keith to give him some air, but he couldn’t speak. His voice was too hoarse, and he coughed to clear his throat, dislodging a small carnation petal, which stuck to his lip. 

Keith’s eyes grew as wide as saucers, and the tears that had been flowing from the corners of his eyes abruptly stopped. Time seemed to slow down as he reached out his fingers to Lance’s face. He plucked the petal from his lip with his thumb and index finger, holding it gingerly, as if it could bite him. He glanced over his shoulder at the petals floating in the pool, and then back at Lance. “You have hanahaki disease?” Keith murmured.

“Keith, I swear it’s not what it looks like,” Lance stammered, but even as he said the words, he knew that it was too little, too late.

The look in Keith’s eyes darkened, as if he didn’t know who Lance was anymore. Keith glowered down at Lance as he pushed himself to his feet. To Lance, still lying on the ground, he suddenly seemed very far away. He propped himself up on his elbows, but that was as far as he could go before pain seized his chest and he was unable to move.

“You must know that hanahaki disease is caused by unrequited love,” Keith said. He held up the petal. “So this couldn’t possibly be for me. You know I love you more than anything in the world. So who is it?”

“No one,” Lance insisted. “I mean it. I’m not in love with… _anyone._ ” He looked into Keith’s eyes desperately, hoping to convey his meaning without having to say the words. 

Keith gave him no such luxury of understanding, though by the way his features sagged, he was starting to get an inkling of what Lance was implying. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not in love with you anymore.” 

The words, like the hanahaki petals, stung as he coughed them out. Like the petals, they sat in a pile that left everyone stunned silent. 

Keith broke the silence with a nervous laugh. “Lance, what are you talking about? This can’t be one of your jokes. This is hardly the time to…”

“I’m not joking. I have a rare case of hanahaki disease,” Lance admitted. “Ulaz had never seen anything like it before. The flowers inside my lungs are dead, and it’s not caused by unrequited love. I’m suffocating because I fell out of love.”

“Lance, why didn’t you tell me?” Keith whispered, his voice cracking.

“This is why,” Lance said. “I didn’t want to break your heart. I thought that if I just buried my feelings, they would go away. But that’s the thing about hanahaki—it gets worse when you deny it. So I guess I have no choice but to admit it now.”

“You didn’t want to break my heart,” Keith repeated, and there was venom in his voice. “Of course it’s going to break my heart to find out that you don’t love me anymore. Lance, if you would have just told me that you were ill, we could have worked it out!”

“No, we can’t,” Lance said. “I’ve tried everything I can to fall back in love with you, because I want to be cured, and forget about all of this, and live happily ever after with someone I love. But I’ve realized that happily ever after doesn’t exist for me.”

“Yes it does! It still can!” Keith pleaded desperately. “This doesn’t have to change a thing! As long as you still want to be with me, we can make this work.” He held out his hand to help Lance up, offering it as if he believed that by holding Lance’s hand in his, he could lead them to a happy future.

Lance wanted to believe him, but as every breath stirred the petals in his chest, he knew the truth.

“I want to, but I can’t,” Lance confessed, wilting like all the life had left him. “Love that’s forced isn’t love. You deserve someone who lights up when they look at you, and makes you feel like you’re easy to love, because you are. You’ve shown me what real love is, and it’s not something I have inside me to give.”

“Who cares what I deserve? There’s no one else in the world that I want more than you,” Keith said, losing control of the tremor in his voice, the pitch and volume rising to a scream.

“I’m sorry, Keith,” Lance said. “It’s better this way.” Never more than in that moment had he wished that hanahaki was fatal, and that it would strike him dead that instant. He would sacrifice anything, even his own life, if it meant that he wouldn’t have to cause Keith pain, but he didn’t have that choice. “I figure, if I have to hurt you, it’s better to hurt you all at once and give you a chance to recover, than to hurt you slowly over a lifetime, when you realize that I don’t love you the way you love me.”

“Maybe you’re right. You don’t love me. People don’t choose to hurt the ones they love,” Keith said. “Just once, I thought that when you promised never to leave me, you were telling the truth. I should have known by now never to believe that from anyone.”

Keith let out a bitter, mirthless laugh, which stabbed deeper into Lance’s chest than the carnation petals themselves. It was true that Keith had gone through more than his fair share of loss in his lifetime. His mother had abandoned him, and even his best friend Shiro had gotten kidnapped by a cult and gone missing for a year. Instead of a happy ending, Lance was yet another tragedy. 

“Keith, I didn’t mean it like that…” He reached out his hand, but the hand that Keith had offered him was gone. It was clenched into a fist at Keith’s side, fingernails digging into his palm, barely holding himself back from crying. He turned around and stormed into the house, flanked by Thace and Ulaz who wrapped their arms around him, with Shiro and Pidge trailing behind them.

The party guests had taken the hint and made their exodus shortly after Lance nearly drowned in the pool. He looked around, and the patio felt empty and oddly cold, despite the warm summer night. The only guests still remaining were Hunk and Allura, seated on the patio chairs nearby. When he noticed Lance shivering, Hunk walked over and draped a beach towel around his shoulders. Allura, wisely, kept her distance.

“It’s okay, Lance,” Hunk said. “Even if you and Keith have a fight, or break up, we’ll still be here for you. That’s what friends are for.”

“This isn’t the kind of fight where you can take sides, Hunk,” Lance sighed. “It’s a fight I’m waging against myself.” Watching the fairy lights go out over the yard as the lights inside the house went on, Lance crumpled under the weight of a fight he had already lost. 


	6. Chapter 6

Lance’s world was confined to his apartment, and mostly his bed, with the occasional excursion to the bathroom. He had to wade through a raft of flowers whenever he mustered the strength to get up. He had never noticed how many there were until he was coughing them up all in one place. They never seemed to stop growing, even though the flowers were dead, almost as if that freed them of the limitations of living things and made them endless.

Even though he was sick, he was tasked with dismantling all the wedding plans. He could hardly expect Keith to help him with any of the work when he was suffering from a broken heart. Nor could he ask for help from Allura, when she was the one who had sown doubt in his relationship, and the state of their friendship was still fragile. Lance had done most of the planning in the first place, so he was the only one who knew who to contact. Thace had canceled their order for flowers without a second thought, but the rest of their vendors were less courteous about the last minute change in plans. 

Most of the wedding shower guests had gotten the impression that the wedding might not be a sure deal, but Lance still faced the challenge of breaking the news to his parents before they made the trip across the country. He had expected to get yelled at, but all he got was concern, which only made it worse. He didn’t know how to explain to them what had happened. He was not only crushing Keith’s dream of being with him, but his family’s dream of seeing him start a family of his own, all because his own selfish heart couldn’t love the way it was supposed to. 

He had entertained the idea of still going through with the wedding as a celebration of friendship, and negotiating his relationship with Keith later. But now that it was all out in the open, his hanahaki had launched a full siege on his body. He barely had the energy to get out of bed, much less star in a wedding. 

He suspected that his hanahaki was reacting to the grief Keith felt. Keith had every right to be angry at Lance for how selfish and thoughtless he was. Lance was angry too, but his anger was like a lion in a circus cage, thrashing at his insides with nowhere to escape. He couldn’t direct his anger at Keith, because Keith had done nothing wrong. He was angry at himself for letting down the one person he cared about most, for sabotaging the one thing that he thought mattered to him. 

A distant knock on the door startled him out of his thoughts. “Allura, I can’t let you see me like this, I’m a mess,” he called out theatrically. 

Then, he realized that the knock was coming directly from his bedroom door. If it was Allura, she would have to knock on the front door, since it was locked. There was only one person who had a key to his apartment.

“It’s me,” Keith’s voice came through the door, faint and hesitant. “Can I come in?”

“It’s open,” Lance replied, not moving to let him in, still languishing in his bed. 

Keith opened the door, holding a box under one arm and a plastic coffee cup in his other hand. When Lance looked at them curiously, Keith gave a self-conscious shrug. “I thought of bringing flowers, but that seemed like it would be too ironic,” Keith joked. “So I brought this instead. It’s Ulaz’s herbal tea, which is supposed to soothe hanahaki.” He set the box down on Lance’s nightstand. It contained several jars of loose-leaf tea, and was wrapped in satin embroidered with an intricate Japanese floral pattern. Lance sat up to take the cup of tea from Keith, breathing in the hot steam and sharp aroma of lavender. 

Keith fidgeted uncomfortably. Without the gifts in his hands to preserve the distance between himself and Lance, he had no way to cover up the awkwardness. Lance gestured to the edge of the bed, inviting him to sit while also scooting closer to the middle himself to make room. Keith sat down, but kept his movements measured and his posture small, approaching Lance as if he were a wounded animal.

“Hi, Keith. How are you doing? Are you holding up all right?” Lance asked, bringing the cup of tea to his lips and taking a sip.

Keith huffed a laugh under his breath. “That’s always like you, isn’t it?” he said. “Asking other people how they’re doing when you’re the one who’s hurting, so that you don’t have to talk about it. But I’m doing fine, thanks for asking.”

“Okay, wow, rude. I feel so called out right now,” Lance said, making a show of pouting and crossing his arms. Raising his voice slightly triggered a cough, and the petals he hacked up fluttered onto the sheets. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he reached for the cup of tea and took another sip. It really did help soothe the ache that each petal left behind. 

Keith looked at him with pity while he rode out his coughing fit, and Lance frowned. “Why are you really here? I appreciate the tea, but I’m sure that wasn’t all you came here for.”

“No, it’s not,” Keith agreed. “I came here to apologize.”

“Why? You don’t need to do that,” Lance said. “Did Thace and Ulaz send you over here to do that?”

“Yes,” Keith admitted, “but I also wanted to.”

“If anything, I hurt you more than you did me,” said Lance. “I’m the one who should be apologizing.”

“You don’t always have to turn it back on yourself like that whenever we argue,” Keith said, heat rising in his voice, before he took a breath and steadied himself. “It’s not your fault you got a disease, so you don’t have to apologize for it. I had an outburst at the party and I didn’t take the time to understand what you were saying. I’m lucky that you even let me in after what I said.”

“You don’t have to be so hard on yourself to earn my sympathy,” Lance retorted. “If you’re looking for my forgiveness, you already have it. I never blamed you in the first place.”

“Thanks. But I don’t want you to blame yourself either,” Keith replied. “How you feel is not your fault. Love is not a choice.” 

“Don’t quote that slogan at me. Thace and Ulaz tried that too,” Lance said. He set the cup of tea down on his nightstand, and flopped back into the pile of pillows on his bed. “Love is a choice. You have to keep choosing every day to be with that person. And that’s where I failed.”

“You didn’t fail,” said Keith. “You tried really hard. Now that I know how much effort you were putting into our relationship, I admire you. But you shouldn’t have had to work that hard.” He worried his bottom lip with his teeth. “Maybe long-term love is a choice. But who you fall in love with, or fall out of love with, that isn’t a choice. No amount of work can create something that isn’t there.”

“I’m so sorry, Keith. You deserved so much better,” Lance murmured. “It’s not even that I don’t love you anymore. I do still love you, just not in a romantic sense. But I care about you, and it tears me up inside that you’re hurt because of me. That’s why I tried for so long to hold on, to be what you needed. Because I needed you in my life. But I can’t love you in the way that you need.”

“The way that I need?” Keith repeated. “Do you think you know what I need?”

“I thought I did,” Lance admitted. All-consuming, world-shattering love. Comfortable and unassuming love. Two souls melding into one, so that they would never need time apart as much as they needed time alone together. That was the kind of love that Keith needed, that Keith deserved. “But now I’m not sure.”

“I don’t think you do,” said Keith. “All that I need is for you to be sincere with yourself. Love that isn’t sincere isn’t the kind of love I need. At first, I had hoped that we could overcome anything, even this hanahaki disease, and stay together. But if being together is what’s causing you to suffer, then I don’t want to put you through that.”

“You’re too good to me, Keith. Even now,” Lance said. He draped his arm over his face to staunch the flow of tears that prickled at the back of his eyes. 

“Lance, can I ask you for a favor?” Keith asked. 

“Anything,” said Lance.

“Can I hold you one last time?” said Keith. He waited for Lance to answer, to let him in or push him away. 

It was too easy for Lance to choose his own comfort, at a time when he desperately needed it. Lance held up the blanket and allowed Keith to slide in next to him. The adjustment was awkward at first, but they settled into a position cuddling face-to-face, with Lance’s head resting on top of Keith’s arm. 

“Do you think that we could still do this again?” Lance said. 

“What?” Keith asked.

“This. Cuddling. Just in a platonic way, without any romantic feelings attached to it.”

The sigh that Keith let out was burdened. “I wish we could,” he said. “But I don’t think I would ever be able to separate those feelings from the action. I don’t know how I’m ever going to stop loving you, Lance.” 

“Even if it’s the only way to cure my hanahaki, I couldn’t ask that of you,” Lance said.

“I promise I will try my best for as long as it takes,” said Keith. “But that’s all I can promise.”

Something flared hot and demanding inside Lance’s chest, and it wasn’t another surge of hanahaki petals. It was the warmth that Keith fed to him, blossoming through him, making him beg for more. He didn’t want this to come to an end, having his need for contact so easily met. He knew there were other ways he could find it, ones that might be more fulfilling given the way that he was, but none that would ever be so effortless. There was no holding back the tears now. They flowed down his cheeks, burning trails of heat down his face.

“I’m going to miss this,” Lance sobbed. 

“Me too,” said Keith. He rubbed the back of Lance’s head in a soothing pattern, trailing the tips of his fingers up and down his spine. 

Lance had an impulse that was irredeemably selfish, or perhaps commendably selfless. He didn’t know if he was giving or taking. Either way, consequences be damned, he followed it. He pressed his lips against Keith’s in a final kiss, a goodbye kiss, a kiss with which he meant to promise closure and hope for tomorrow all at once.

Keith returned the kiss, but didn’t deepen it, locking his lips at an angle with Lance’s without opening them. He was the one who pulled away, not in a startled way as if he hadn’t wanted it, but in a lingering way as if he wanted more, his lips still mere inches away from Lance’s. 

“Take good care of yourself, Lance.” As he swung his legs out of the bed, Keith leaned over and gave Lance another kiss, this time to his forehead. His lips against Lance’s skin were taut in a shy smile, one that Lance got to see as Keith stood up and waved over his shoulder. He shuffled to the door, his footsteps stirring up a few petals on the floor as he went, and then closed it behind him. 

Lance expected to feel more of those same petals stirring in his chest after such a tender moment with Keith, but the tightness didn’t come. Instead, it felt like the stems that had entwined themselves around Lance’s lungs had loosened their grip. They hadn’t disappeared entirely, as he could still feel them there like a part of him, but they had given him a brief reprieve. 

As long as Keith was still in love with Lance, Lance would still suffer from hanahaki. Recovery was a slow road, but they were both getting there.


	7. Chapter 7

Wisteria branches tickled the roof of the gazebo, their purple petals fluttering to the ground in the gentle breeze. Lance leaned against one of the wooden supports with his arms folded, his finger tapping nervously on the inside of his elbow. 

Allura’s hand coming down upon his shoulder startled him, and she stifled a giggle when he flinched. He had been staring out at the trees, but now he turned to face her, taking note of her rose satin gown embroidered with gems on the shoulder straps, and her white hair cascading down her back in elegant curls. Even at a wedding, she always made an effort to outshine everyone around her. 

“Everything okay, Lance? You seem a little tense,” Allura said.

“Of course I’m tense,” Lance quipped. “It’s the big day, you know.”

“Indeed it is,” Allura agreed. “You know, after everything that happened, I never thought I’d see this day.”

“You and me both,” said Lance. 

“Are you happy with how everything turned out?” Allura asked him. Her turquoise eyes searched him, digging through a trunk in the attic of his mind, trying to find some scrap of doubt or regret. 

“Yeah. I am,” Lance replied, and the smile that spread across his lips when he said that was genuine. It was infectious too, and Allura smiled back, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes. A spark of the doubt that she was looking for in Lance’s eyes was reflected in her own. “Are  _ you _ happy with all of it?” Lance said, turning the question back on her. 

“Of course. As long as you and Keith are happy,” Allura answered, turning her face into her palm to hide the hint of uncertainty that wavered at the corners of her mouth. She disguised it by moving her hand up to her temple to adjust her hair clip.

“I mean with what’s going on in your life,” Lance prompted. 

“Oh! Well, today isn’t really about me, but now that you mention it...” She held out her hand and displayed her engagement ring, wiggling her finger so that it sparkled in the light. 

“Whoa! Congratulations, Allura! So your mystery man proposed?” Lance said. Allura had met her new beau while she was out of town for a destination wedding for one of her clients, and Lance and the rest of their squad had heard remarkably little about him in the several months since she had returned, other than that she was head over heels for him. Apparently the feeling was mutual, and things were moving fast, which seemed to be exactly how she liked it. 

“Yes! ‘Always a bridesmaid, never a bride’ no more!” Allura said, admiring the ring. It bore a light purple cushion-cut tanzanite surrounded by diamonds and set in white gold. The stones looked huge on her dainty finger. Whoever her mystery man was, he had to be  _ rich _ . “I’ll be bringing him to town for our engagement party, but that’s still in the works. Until then, keep it hush-hush.”

“My lips are sealed,” said Lance. 

The chime of a bell announced the start of the ceremony. “Places!” Allura called out to the rest of the wedding party, who had gathered in the gazebo and were milling about. “And Lance, one more thing.”

“Yeah?” Lance said, turning back to face her.

“Your bow tie is crooked.” Allura’s hands reached up to his collar to adjust his blue bow tie, her fingers brushing against the bare skin of his neck in a move that seemed too calculated to be accidental. She cupped his face in her hand, and patted his cheek. “Good luck, Lance.”

“Er, you too,” Lance said with a gulp. He had hoped that her new flame meant that Allura had finally gotten over him, but she was still sending him mixed signals. At least he had steered their friendship back to safety after it had almost been dashed on the rocks of the hanahaki disease. Theirs was a bond that had weathered the most tumultuous storms, and for that he was grateful.

Lance took his place next to Shiro and Hunk, while Allura lined up beside the other bridesmaids. The audience was seated between rows of wisteria and cherry blossom trees, and Lance was facing Keith’s side of the aisle. Thace and Ulaz waved to him from the front row. 

The aisle extended all the way to the sidewalk at the edge of the park, and a limo pulled up on the street. Out of the limo stepped Keith, and the audience turned to watch him walk down the aisle. He took each step with purpose, his posture composed and at ease as he ascended the steps of the gazebo. He looked stunning in his all-black tux and red tie, with his long hair pulled back into a ponytail. 

Once he had stepped onto the floor of the gazebo, Keith’s next move was to tackle Lance into a tight, affectionate, breathless hug. When he pulled back, he held Lance with both of his hands on Lance’s arms, and beamed at him with a smile that was so bright with joy that Lance felt like he would need sunglasses to look at him. “Lance, I can’t tell you how happy I am that you’re here. None of this would have been possible without you.”

“I’m happy to be a part of it,” said Lance. He gently nudged Keith’s shoulder, and Keith turned around to face the aisle again, standing beside Lance and slightly in front of him. 

The audience’s gaze had turned back to the limo. The driver got out and opened the rear door again, and held out his hand to help the other passenger out. 

The bride’s shoes and the hem of her gown preceded her as she stepped out of the car; she had opted for a sleek gown with a high slit extending up to her thigh. The strapless neckline displayed the periwinkle blue skin of her arms and chest, contrasting vibrantly with the traditional white of the gown. Acxa’s veil trailed behind her, pinned to her head with a crystal tiara between her horns.

When Keith saw her, he clasped his hand over his mouth. Tears welled up in his eyes and rolled in unrestrained streams down his cheeks. That look was what made all of this worth it. The tears of joy, the sheer awe on his face—Keith deserved nothing less than to have a partner who made him feel like that every moment of every day.

That was what Lance had been hoping for, when he had been engaged to Keith. That revelatory moment when he would see that awe in Keith and find it echoed back within himself. It happens without warning, he realized. That he was looking for it only served as evidence that it wasn’t there. 

He thought about what it would feel like if he were standing here, in front of Keith’s family and friends, with his own family watching him as well. If he were marrying Keith today, or two years ago when they were supposed to have their wedding, he would feel proud of himself for reaching a milestone in his life, and for being there for Keith. But he would also be haunted by regrets that they had both missed out on what they really wanted. If he had gone through with it, he would have chained himself to a life he didn’t want out of obligation, and deprived Keith of the elation that he was feeling now. He could be there for Keith in a different way, here at his wedding not as his groom but as his best man. 

Keith wiped the tears from his eyes, and that radiant smile returned as Acxa stepped up to the platform and he took both of her hands in his. She smiled back at him, unable to keep her cheeks from blushing a darker blue under such an intense adoring gaze. 

Looking at them, Lance realized that he wasn’t jealous in the slightest. He wasn’t jealous of the beautiful ceremony, or being the center of attention at a gathering of a hundred people, even though those were all the things that he had thought that he always wanted. But most of all, he wasn’t jealous of their love for each other, or even their ability to feel such a thing. 

All his life, he had heard messages about what love is. Love is a feeling. Love is a choice. But in all those attempts to define it, no one had ever bothered to tell him what love isn’t. It isn’t a requirement for a happy life. It comes in many forms, too, and even if it isn’t the romantic kind with grand gestures and spectacular wedding ceremonies, it’s still something worth celebrating.

Today was about Keith and Acxa’s love for each other, but it was also about the love Keith shared with his family, and his close-knit circle of friends, and Lance. Lance’s love for Keith was a deep platonic love that simmered inside his chest, the kind of love that would sacrifice anything and everything so that Keith could be happy. 

Except he didn’t have to. Keith had given him the freedom to choose the life that made him happy, too. He had found a lifestyle that fulfilled him, where he was open with his partners about his preference not to get involved in a long-term relationship. He touched his wrist, and felt the woven bracelet with the frayromantic flag colors there. He had started wearing it shortly after his engagement with Keith broke off, and he hadn’t taken it off ever since. Like a wedding ring, it was a promise, a promise to himself not to lie about who he was. 

“Greetings, everyone,” Allura announced into a microphone. “We are here today to witness the union of two of the most amazing people I have ever met. Lance will carry out the rest of the introductions.” She handed the microphone to Lance with an encouraging smile.

“Thank you,” Lance said, taking the microphone from her. “As Allura said, today we celebrate the marriage between my best friend, Keith, and his best friend, Acxa. Now, if you’ve known us for a long time, you might remember that two years ago, there was supposed to be a different wedding. Two years ago, Keith and I were engaged.”

There was no gasp of shock among the crowd, because as Lance had correctly guessed, most of them had been invited to the wedding two years ago and knew at least some of the story. 

“Some of you might know that I had to call off the wedding because I was sick. Some of you might have wondered why that meant I had to cancel it entirely, instead of postponing it to a later date.”

Lance’s hand moved up to his chest to touch the boutonniere pinned to his jacket. He had chosen to wear a flower to the wedding that otherwise didn’t fit with the color scheme of his navy blue suit: a variegated carnation. 

“I had a rare case of hanahaki disease,” Lance said, which did set off a ripple of surprised murmurs. Ulaz’s research had made hanahaki disease more well known in their community, but most people had still never heard such a mysterious disease mentioned so openly. “For all the pain it caused me, I think the hanahaki disease kept me alive in the end, and gave Keith and me both the opportunity to lead fuller lives.” 

He had denied the emotional signs for so long that his body had to send him a signal that couldn’t be ignored. Once he had listened, the foliage inside his lungs began to wither away, and now he was almost fully recovered. He only felt the remnants of the scarring that the plants had left behind whenever he laughed so hard that he gasped for breath. Never did he feel more vividly alive and in love with life than in those moments. He wore the flower as a solemn, but welcome reminder that love should never feel like a limitation. 

“Since then, I have had the honor of witnessing Keith and Acxa’s relationship transform, from a friendship based on deep trust and mutual respect, to a movie-worthy romance that can make anyone believe that true love really does exist.”

Falling in love with someone who was already his close friend was not something that Lance thought could ever happen to him, but it was the only way it could happen to Keith. He understood now the loneliness woven into both sides, demi and fray, and he found solidarity with Keith despite the feeling that he would never quite relate to his experience. His friendships didn’t need to turn into romance for him to consider the love he felt for his friends important.

“I used to think that was what everyone wanted. True love. When I was engaged to Keith, I thought that I was living the dream. But when I developed hanahaki, I realized that I was living someone else’s dream,” Lance said. Relief surged through him at finally saying those words, and realizing that they were true. He hadn’t chosen the path that society had laid out for him, and he had come to terms with that. 

“Now, Keith and Acxa are living their dream, and I’m living mine,” Lance said. Keith and Acxa both turned to face Lance with smiles on their faces, and he felt buoyed by the support of his friends. “It is my hope today that they will keep making each other as happy as their love makes me. They’ve each found someone who brightens their world, and that is a reason to celebrate.”

The couple turned back to face each other, with their gazes locked as if they were the only two people in the world. The love that welled up inside Lance felt like enough to burst out of his chest, stronger than a tidal wave of carnation petals.


End file.
